IA Research & Design Project – 1
The goal of the project was to redesign the Library of Allen’s website from the ground up by organizing and restructuring current content and make room for more. They have a sizeable amount of content on the website but the organizational scheme is no longer working for them. They are looking for a better organizational scheme and improved information architecture that is functional and supports user tasks and findability.
Summary of Research
The Research was completed in 4 phases: Interviews, Literature Search, Persona Development, and Content Analysis. Following are details and results of each phase. (Detailed Research Report can be found here)
1. Interviews
- To understand library and website visitors, two people who worked at public libraries and interact with patrons were interviewed.
- The interviews were conducted over the phone and took approximately 40 minutes each.
- Analysis of the interview findings was done using the Affinity Diagram Method. This exercise helped us narrow down our key users, their needs, goals, and tasks that we need to accommodate or find solutions for in our design.
- Target Personas were created on the basis of these findings to help get through our design process.
2. Literature Search
We looked at other studies done on the library websites in the past so we can correlate the data with our findings. The sources we included in the study can be found at the following links: Study 1, Study 2, Study 3. There were several overlaps between our findings and the results in the research papers, our key findings are discussed next.
3. Personas
Based on our research findings, we created User personas, these are profiles of imaginary people who represent typical users of the library website. We look back to these personas at every stage to make sure the website is complying with their needs. We decided on 3 Personas – 2 primary and 1 secondary listed on the next page. We also have a priority task list based on the personas in the next post.
Research Results:
