Website Woes? How and Why User Input Should Guide Your Website Decisions

Rebecca Blakiston & Dan LeeUniversity of Arizona Libraries

November 30, 2011Arizona Library Association Annual

Conference

What are you already doing?

UA’s Track Record

• 1997 Redesign – Dickstein & Mills Information Technologies & Libraries article

• 2004 Redesign

• 2008 Redesign

• 2010 going forward

Why Do User Testing?

• We know best. Don’t we?

• Ranganathan’s 4th Law - Save the time of the user

• Video Clip

Personas

• Representation of the goals and behavior of a real group of users

• Define:oDemographic type of typical useroAttitude and approach s/he brings

to the siteo Typical task

User Research Methods

Surveys

Category Agreement Analysis

Card Sorting

Websort.net

Intercept Usability Testing

• Step 1: Write tasks• Step 2: Write Scenarios• Step 3: Test Scenarios

What We Are Learning Generally…

What We Are Learning Specifically…

What We Did…

Before

After

Before After

Before

After

Before

After

What We Are Working On…

Bringing it all Together

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