UXLibs7 2023 – ‘Connections & Collaborations’

At the start of June, I attended UXLibs7 at the University of Sussex in Falmer, near Brighton. The theme for this year was ‘Connections and Collaborations’, looking at:

• Collaborating with specific user groups to co-create more relevant and inclusive library services.
• Forging connections with external groups or individuals to improve our processes and results.
• Persuading senior managers and stakeholders of the value of UX research.

The conference gave me lots to think about when it comes to conducting UX research and ensuring we are being more inclusive with any research we undertake.

Opening address

Making it Right: employing creative UX research methods for richer engagement by Andy Priestner (Chair of UX in Libraries and Director of Andy Priestner Training & Consulting)

Andy opened the conference by discussing and encouraging us to use more creative ‘right-brained’ UX methods and the value offered by exploring creative expression. These include:

• Cognitive mapping – users draw pictures of their experiences on paper with different coloured pens.
• Love and break-up letters – users write letters to a service as if it is someone they love or are breaking up with.
• Generative play – users build physical models of their experiences, thoughts, and feelings.

Most people will be more creative than we might expect and by giving our users the opportunity to express themselves creatively, we can receive richer information and provide an opportunity to connect more deeply.

We can take this further by using these methods for generating ideas and designing and testing new service ideas (ideation and prototyping). These sorts of methods are engaging and enable people to:

• Perform divergent thinking – embracing creativity and spontaneity.
• Tell stories – promoting deeper understanding and providing emotional context.
• Use imagination – accessing innovative solutions.

We could consider using these sorts of methods when collecting feedback from our students, perhaps to complement the data we receive through Big Talk.

Keynote 1

DOKK1: public participation as democratic infrastructure by Marie Østergård (Director of Aarhus Public Libraries, Denmark)

Marie oversees Dokk1, a public space that functions as a culture house to unite public institutions such as the library, citizen services, and national TV. It is designed to be a democratic space, providing a place for co-creation, dialogue, knowledge, and inspiration with people and the community as the focus.

Democratic open buildings are key to empowering and enabling citizens. Marie and her staff believe that if you plan and programme everything within your physical space, there is no room for co-creation or adaptability. The spaces within Dokk1 can look different every single day and you can do lots of different things within them.

The questions they ask themselves are how can we say yes more? And how do we develop a space so we can say yes more?

🔗dokk1.dk

Keynote 2

Be your most disruptive self: collective action in experience and design by Dr Arun Verma (Head of Inclusion, University of London, UK)

Arun talked about the idea of ‘constructive disruption’ to make real intersectional change within our organisations. We may have seen this as ‘change management’ or ‘transformation’.

Intersectionality is an inclusion practice developed in the 1980s and designed as a tool for action.

Libraries naturally support inclusion as they have always been places to reflect and ask questions but what part do libraries play in practising zero tolerance when it comes to exclusion? Competing priorities and poor practices interconnect and unless they are disrupted, they cannot be changed.

Disruption can take the form of interventions, investments, policies, programmes, and transformations.

🔗 arunverma.co.uk

Plenary 1

Design, Align, Combine: getting buy-in for your great ideas by Emma Thompson (Head of Academic Engagement and Teaching Services, Manchester Metropolitan University Library, UK)

Emma spoke about how to align with – and communicate within – our organisations while engaging in UX research. Through her experience managing up, down, and sideways, she believes that everyone can influence positive change.

Design – UX research does not always have to be big; from the initial method to the final change small changes can make a big difference. For example, the law department was becoming bigger and law students wanted their own library. By speaking with them to find out what they wanted (a cosy place like home) they could work with what they had to provide a solution (rearranging the shelving to create a cosy space).

Align – Aligning with the strategy, goals, and objectives of the wider organisation is important. When proposing a new idea or piece of UX research, consider the key strategic aims of your organisation and align your own strengths and ideas with these.

Combine – Combining with people can mean you can work with others on your idea with often much-needed support. Consider letting go of your idea if it might be better taken forward by someone else.

Traditionally, librarians are the people who answer questions. Sometimes we need to ask questions too and UX is a good example of that.

Plenary 2

Inclusion through Participation: exploring the barriers to real inclusion for underserved communities in UX research by Dr Victoria Olaniyan (Senior User Researcher, Methods, UK)

Victoria explained that ‘underserved’ are groups with lower inclusion in research than we would expect given population estimates.

Why ‘underserved’? Phrases like ‘underrepresented’, ‘hard to reach’ and ‘marginalised’ put the onus on the individual to be represented and have their voices heard, whereas underserved puts the lack of inclusion into the context of the barriers they face.

• Demographic factors (e.g., disabled, age extremes, women of childbearing age, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+/sexual orientation, educational disadvantage)
• Social and economic factors (e.g., people in full-time employment, unemployed/low income, military veterans, people in alternative residential circumstances, digitally excluded)
• Health status (e.g., mental health conditions, cognitive impairment, learning/physical disability, people with addictions, pregnant people)

By including underserved groups in UX research, we can empower these groups and build trust between the groups and researchers to effectively deliver services and products. By actively ensuring the involvement of underserved groups, we can also develop both personally and professionally as researchers.

Participation v inclusion – Participation is the involvement of people in the decisions and processes that affect their lives, including sharing information, consulting, managing, making decisions, and acting. Inclusion can be defined as ‘the degree to which individuals feel a part of critical organisational processes,’ which can involve access to resources and decision-making. These terms are often used interchangeably when we start with participation and hope to move towards inclusion, however, we need to consider that there are barriers that can prevent us from moving past participation.

Barriers to inclusion – These include the increasing digitisation of research methods, focusing on unidimensional aspects of diversity, lack of willingness to participate (stemming from negative attitudes and beliefs, lack of trust, lack of interest), lack of research confidence or training, and exclusionary recruitment practices (poor promotion and advertising, lack of incentives, timing or location).

Facilitators for inclusion – These can look like cultural congruence (people recognising themselves in the research), participant benefits (social or financial incentives), and the removal of logistical barriers. However, these Facilitators can only cancel out barriers in the right environment.

In UX research, we often conduct research from a place of bias e.g., us vs them, with our language reinforcing our biases e.g., ‘hard to reach’. Research and learning institutions are exclusionary with the language of research, power imbalance, lack of diverse workforce, and research dominated by the Global North. There are deeply rooted issues within the research environment that cannot be changed by one individual or library service alone – but this doesn’t mean they should be ignored.

By being aware and knowledgeable about these systemic problems, we can work to overcome these barriers and ensure the environment is right for facilitators to work.

Plenary 3

More than just working together: reflections on UX work and collaboration by Shelley Gullikson (Web & UX Librarian, Carleton University, Ottawa)

Shelley spoke about a project she ran on how UX work in academic libraries is structured and supported, and the conclusions that were drawn from her initial research:

• Working groups demonstrate the impact of UX work. For example, a UX committee allows communication and collaboration with other teams and departments.
• Having the authority to implement change, or having the support of those who can, is important.

Over time, it was clear that the first conclusions were not the end of the story. Shelley realised that although she was working with other people, she found that she was working on her own a lot. Shelley re-interviewed the participants from her first project, to gain an insight into whether others were experiencing the same and what more could be done.

The next step of Shelley’s research was to understand what meaningful support from management looks like. This includes time, money, participant incentives, staff support, and a genuine interest in, and acknowledgement of, the value of, UX. Working with management is a collaboration to determine resources and expectations, align potential UX work with strategic objectives, and ensure that results are taken on board, with change implemented where a need has been identified.

Mini-plenary

UX and spatial skills by Dr Clodagh Reid (Assistant Lecturer in Technology Education at the Technological University of the Shannon, Ireland)

I also attended different workshops and delegate presentations, which are linked below:

Workshops

Taking UX beyond the library by Pete Hanna and Sarah Halliday (University of Hertfordshire, UK)

‘Punching Up’ – Engaging with Senior Decision Makers with developed Negotiation and Persuasion skills by Jane Burns (Technological University of  the Shannon, Ireland)

Delegate presentations

An advisory board by any other name: embedding UX and cultivating engagement through a user working group turned homegrown student organization by Amanda Kraft (College of Charleston, USA)

‘We don’t start with Library’: students interviewing students about using the Library website by Gopal Dutta (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

We’re the problem: mapping our way out of printing purgatory by Joshua Herter and Sydney Nicholauson (University of Winnipeg, Canada)

When you wish upon a stall: toilet facilities as a factor in library satisfaction among trans and gender nonconforming users by Hannah Jones (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)