User Research

• High School, Early College, Upper-Class College, Graduate students

• Massachusetts, Texas, California, Nevada

• Diversity of background, socioeconomic status

• “Describe your last research project”

Contextual Inquiry Study: Students

The Magic 6:Key Strategies for the

Library Customer Experience

The Magic 6

Zoom Out

Why and how to study users’ full digital landscape

Googlepedia

Understand the powerful influence of Google and Wikipedia

Results: the New Black

How the search results page became the key destination

Understanding Motivation

Why do students “make the turn” towards informavore?

Information Literacy

Where and when are students learning these important skills?

The Intuitive Library Website

It’s possible. And it’s critical.

Googlepedia

Google + Wikipedia = Googlepedia

The Google-Wikipedia cycle becomes deeply ingrained because it provides a reward.

Yes, but how do we adapt this approach for scholarly research?

Understand and learn from the

powerful influence of Google and

Wikipedia.

2

“It’s their oxygen”

Google and Discovery

The first half of the first page of results is critical.

Page 1 matters most

If my search fails – it must be my fault

I “trust” it

Wikipedia is often the first result.

Go to Images, News etc from this page.

Users are more likely to search again than to look at page 2+ of results.

Because users like an overview they can understand

Wikipedia

1

2

3

Overview in “layman’s language”

Table of contents – “preview”

References and external links at the bottom

EDS Research Starters

EDS Research Starters

Results: The New Black

The Search Results page is no longer a pass-through; it is a destination all its own.

Discovery is a critical tool so the best, most relevant results are shown on page 1.

Users make decisions from the results page. Full-text and comprehensive metadata must be immediately available.

How the search results page became the most important

page.

3

Skimmers, scanners, efficiency-seekers

User Research Improves EDS

• Research Starters• Brings “Googlepedia” concept to Discovery• Research Starters provided for top 60,000+ searches• Keeps users in the library brand

• Result List Displays• Rich metadata and full text pdfs – users make decisions

from results list

• Responsive Auto-Complete• Uses “big data” to improve searching • Auto-complete suggestions by popularity

• Relevance Ranking

EDS: Top Search Terms

Sourced from one-week (Sept. 2014) sample of top search terms by marketFiltered to queries searched across at least 100 EDS customers

EDS Sample Search Screen

EDS Auto-Complete

EDS Results List

Research Starters: Citable sources; 68,000 entries

selected from most popular EDS

searches