Researching ResearchersDesigning the User Experience at ProQuest RefWorks

Joined ProQuest in 2013 Senior UX Designer, Researcher Tools

Nice to meet you…

Researcher Tools at ProQuest

A Look at ProQuest User Experience Design

About ProQuest

User Experience Design Team

User Research Interaction Design IA Visual Design Usability

Testing

• Summon• 360 Link• Primo

Discovery

• ProQuest Platform• Literature Online• ProQuest Congressional• Ebook Central • ProQuest Dialog• many more . . .

Content• RefWorks• Pivot

Researcher Tools

• What happens before they click? • Do we have the right navigation? • How can we make it easier to . . . ?

It starts with a question…

HYPOTHESIZE / IDEATE

Contextual InterviewsUsage Analytics

Behavioral AnalyticsHeat-maps

Survey Data

VALIDATE

PrototypingUn-moderated Testing

Moderated TestingBeta Testing

Users, needs, behaviors

Interaction design

A User Research Toolkit

A User Research Cadence

• Qualitative Research Initiatives – 2014 - Study of Student Research, focus groups & interviews– 2015 - Contextual Inquiry on Academic Faculty– 2016 - Contextual Interviews, Research Groups (Current)

• Workflow Studies – Roleplaying Initiatives– Literature Reviews

• Usability Study– Validation Testing & User Testing – Remote Usability Studies– Customer Interviews

Users, needs, behaviors

Interaction design

Going to their environment

Capturing their context

A Breadth of Researchers

A Breadth of Disciplines

A Breadth of Processes

Roleplaying Initiatives

Literature Studies

"more research has yet to be conducted on how socially-constructed and postmodern views of socialization can characterize the

graduate student experience.” (p 36)

What does the researcher’s journey look like?

 

Some of our Insights

Three Key Influencers

Workflow Process

Project Cycles

Self-Structured Organization

A Preference for Systematic Reviews

A Preference for Systematic Reviews

"I use a citation manager to compile references and deduplication for bibliometric… RefWorks chokes when the database gets above a few thousand.” - PhD Candidate, Legacy RefWorks user

Tactical Writing Strategies

Tools of the Trade

An Abundance of Options

An Abundance of Environments

A Hierarchy or Researcher Tools

What Functions matter to Grad Students?

Collaboration tools

Conduct searches

Share citations

Manage citations

Share documents

Annotate documents

Organize documents

Store documents

0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00% 80.00%

8.42%

46.52%

16.48%

79.85%

19.05%

38.83%

61.17%

58.61%

Functions for which Graduate Students Use Research Tools

New Pathways in Scholarly Research, 2015

Tool-Making

Capturing the Bigger (& Smaller) Picture

Imagining Today

The Researcher’s ChoiceWe’re continuing to lead the world or reference management

Rethinking Citation View

• Newer researchers don’t always begin their paper at RefWorks • Users describe “just quickly grabbing a citation”• A simple function-oriented workflow comes from this paradigm

1. Get some citations into RefWorks as quickly as possible2. Copy the citation style for the bibliography, probably type in-text by hand 3. Check the info to ensure nothing’s missing (optional)

Cite View Scenarios

Where is citation view?

There it is.

A complex menu to “customize”

View references as citations

Still need to change the view

Imagining a Future

Looking Back to Look Forward

What if?

A Few Concepts We’re Imagining

Access to Full-Text

Course-Focused Organization

The Bigger & Smaller View

Planning & Delegating

Thank you.