User Research at the Illinois Institute of Technology

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Project Overview

Over the course of 3 months, I served as a user research lead on a technical team responsible for applying a new systems framework to the Illinois Institute of Technology’s institutional repository. During that time frame, I developed a research project that would help to answer some of the team’s most pressing questions about the new framework and the community that would use it. I worked with them to create a research plan, write interview and usability test questions, identify users to interview, schedule research sessions with them.

Problem Statement

The team at the Illinois Institute of Technology Paul V. Galvin Library hired me to conduct qualitative research on their institutional repository platform. My original task was to validate their design decisions and identify any obvious user issues before the official launch of the platform. However, when I began asking them additional questions about their users, it became clear that they had deeper questions about the community’s motivations behind using (or avoiding) the repository.

Users and Audience

Faculty, researchers, and students at the Illinois Institute of Technology

Timeline

May – August 2019

Roles and Responsibilities

I served as an embedded user researcher in a small team of 3 technical librarians and archivists. In my role, I sought to find answers to some of the team’s top questions about the audience that would use the repository and the usability of the platform itself. That resulted in leading a qualitative research project that incorporated semi-structured individual interviews and usability tests.

Scope and Constraints

I worked within a 10-week time frame over the course of the summer semester at the Illinois Institute of Technology Paul V. Galvin Library. This time period on a college campus tends to be slower than normal with many faculty members traveling or working off-site. As a result, I had to limit the number of people I could expect to interview over the course of the research period.

Additionally, there was very little funding allocated for conducting user research. Our team used what was available and on-hand in order to complete the project within the time frame.

Research Process

Identifying the problem(s) to be solved

When I joined the team, I spent some time asking a lot of questions to identify the research problem they wanted me to solve. At first, it appeared that they wanted me to run a few usability tests on the new institutional repository platform to identify any major issues they had overlooked. But as we continued to talk, it became clear to me that they had larger questions about how and whether their academic community would use the repository.

I realized that this research project would encompass more than a few usability testing sessions. We needed to talk to our users if the team wanted any answers to their questions and assumptions.

Conducting competitive analysis

Before delving into my research project, I analyzed the original institutional repository at the Illinois Institute of Technology and compared it to the new repository still in beta. I noted the differences in the user interface, the user experience, and the content layout.

Then, to understand the possibilities afforded by the Islandora framework, I analyzed 5 other repositories that use the same framework:

Barnard College’s digital collections
University of Notre Dame’s institutional repository

Developing my research approach

From what I learned about the repository and the team’s vision for its future use, I decided to pursue two research paths.

First, I would speak directly with the intended audience for the repository: faculty members at the Illinois Institute of Technology. By doing this, I hoped that I would uncover some insights they might have about why and how they use the repository to communicate their research findings to a wider audience. Second, I would lead usability testing sessions with participants who were already familiar with the library’s website and existing platform. I hoped that by using this approach I would identify the top issues that users might encounter when navigating the new platform.

I documented several assumptions about the repository’s users I had heard the first week on site. These assumptions helped guide me as I refined my overall research question. From there, I developed and refined the questions I would ask the faculty, requesting feedback and suggestions from my team along the way. Then, I collaborated with my team and other co-workers at the library to identify any faculty members who would be willing to speak with me to recruit them for the research study.

For the usability tests, I asked my team to identify the top 3 tasks that they felt we needed to test before we could introduce the new platform to the community. From there, I created 3 usability scenarios that would incorporate these 3 tasks. I used these scenarios to lead 4 participants through the usability test. As I did this, one of my team members sat in to observe them and noted the issues each participant encountered.

Each interview and usability test I conducted gave me rich qualitative data that I passed onto my team. I conducted a top-level analysis of the data, which I summarized and deconstructed in my final report and presentation.

Outcomes and Lessons Learned

By the end of the summer, I interviewed 9 faculty members and led 4 usability tests. After analyzing all of the data and information I had gathered over the course of the project, I presented my findings to the team and recommended a few next steps. I validated and debunked a few of their assumptions about their users and revealed a future opportunity for the institutional repository.

The findings from our usability tests allowed us to take action immediately on some issues that our participants encountered. On top of that, the information I gleaned from the faculty members I interviewed presented a pathway for possible future research.

My work at the Illinois Institute of Technology Paul V. Galvin Library taught me a few things about conducting this type of qualitative research. I recognized halfway through my time that I had bit off more than I could chew – there was more to this particular research project than I had time to dedicate. Refining the scope of the project would have saved me from scrambling to gather everything together at the end. Additionally, my failure to communicate my preliminary data as I was gathering them meant that I left my team in the dark unwittingly. Had I known this earlier, I would have kept them better informed about what I was doing and how.