experimentation and innovation in libraries: from design thinking to leanux

@Seman'cWill  

Experimentation & Innovation In Libraries From Design Thinking to LeanUX

WILL EVANS Director of Design & Research

TLC Labs / The Library Corporation

Design Thinker-in-Residence

NYU Stern Graduate School of Management

Let’s start with an exercise!

Which is timed

You have 3 minutes

Ask your neighbor:

Why do we need libraries? then

Snap a quick photo of them

Post their response w. image to Twitter, using

the Hashtag #TLCU13

Background

What is the purpose of libraries?

To be a community gathering place?

To promote lifelong learning?

To help people navigate the information flow?

To empower a more informed citizenry?

To store print documents for the historic record?

What Challenges Have We Faced?

Even though digital and behavior are my medium, I still love

physical books that offer so many things digital simply can’t.

“I’ve learned that when you keep the focus solely on your local

patron’s experience and direct your efforts only toward

improving that experience, you’re giving the taxpayer an

increasingly valuable return on their investment.”

– Eli Neiburger

Across the country, libraries are providing services and crafting experiences that make patrons'

visits meaningful and pleasurable.

What is UX Design?

User experience is about how you design solutions and services that solve

real human needs…

True Fact

A significant percentage of the UX community have an LIS background.

•  Articulated context •  Focus on people, not technology •  Centered on customer’s needs, goals, desires •  Clear hierarchy of information and tasks •  Focus on simplicity; reduce visual complexity •  Provide strong information scent •  Use constraints appropriately •  Make actions reversible •  Provide meaningful feedback

Principles of UX

•  Products and services must serve people •  Respect all ways in which value is delivered to

customers •  Use technology intelligently to serve the customer

experience

Doesn’t this sound a lot like the values of library science?

Variant

Problem vs. Solution

“Focus on the problem. If you’re only excited about the solution, you’ll lose interest when

your solution doesn’t fix the problem.” - Adil Wali, CTO of ModCloth

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking Premise

Only through contact, observation, and empathy with customer’s can you hope to design solutions to fit their needs and

make their world a better place.

As opposed to?

•  We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution.

•  We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for?

•  Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X?

•  Our director just imagined this amazing project, lets get funding and hire someone to build or buy it for us.

4 Key Elements to Design Thinking

We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? •  Empathy through research •  Framing the problem •  Generative Ideation •  Prototyping & validation

Three Overlapping Constraints

Where is Design Innovation?

Ideation Process

WHAT IS LEAN STARTUP?

Minimize TOTAL time through the loop

How to do it: Lean Startup Meta-Rules

1.  “Get out of the building” – talk to people. 2.  Clearly articulate & test your assumptions. 3.  Iterate based on what you learned. 4.  Don’t invest in anything that isn’t

validated

Early Assumptions Can Include:

1.  Who is our customer? 2.  What pain points to they have? 3.  How will we solve their pain points? 4.  What is the most important thing they need? 5.  How are we different?

Which you turn into testable hypotheses!

Falsifiable hypothesis =

[Specific Repeatable Action] Will

[Expected Measurable Outcome]

Formulating Your Test

4 Key Elements to Lean UX

We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? •  Empathy through research •  Framing the problem •  Generative Ideation •  Prototyping & validation

BASICS OF CUSTOMER RESEARCH

*    

“Insight about customer behavior and work patterns were never discovered sitting at your desk.”

*    

Research, when done well, creates a deep sense of empathy for others.

*    

The real world presents real challenges, which you will never experience in an office.

*    

Understanding context involves being-there.

*    

Understanding implies deep engagement.

*    

You are not the customer.

Background

Why Research?

Insights about an industry, market, or customer segment were never discovered sitting on your couch (or at your

desk!)

Malkovich Bias

The tendency to believe that everyone uses technology

the same way you do.

Customer Research

Customer Research How much research?

0

12  

Lots  

People  

Insights  

A Research Heuristic

Types of Research

ETHNOGRAGHY

Ethnography

Literally “writing culture” Ethnography is: 1.  The process of “deep hanging out.” 2.  The richest research method we have. 3.  Something you can do all the time!

Ethnography Allows Us To

1. Discover the semantics of living

2. Decode signifiers of cultural practice

3. Understand the language people use.

Keys To Good Ethnography

Delve deeply into the context, lives, cultures, and rituals of a few people rather than study a large number of people superficially.

This isn’t about booty calls, this is about relationships.

Holistically study people’s behaviors and experiences in daily life. You won’t find this in a lab, focus group, or 5 minute

interview on the street.

Learn to ask probing, open questions, gathering as much data as possible to inform your understanding.

Practice “active seeing,” and “active listening.” Record every minutiae of daily existence, and encode on post-its.

Use digital tools for asynchronous data collection: Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr.

Use collaborative sense-making activities like cynefin and affinity diagramming to understand and formulate a narrative of

experience.

CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS AKA “Get out of the building.”

12  

Before Interviews

•  Identify who you are interviewing •  Articulate customer hypotheses •  Craft a topic map for your interviews •  Write down your prompts

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9 Keys to Interviewing

1.  One interview at a time 2.  Always pair interview (if you can) 3.  Introduce yourself 4.  Record the conversation 5.  Ask general, open-ended questions to get

people talking 6.  As questions around the problem “Do you

ever experience a problem like X” 7.  Then ask, “Tell me about the last time…” 8.  Listen more than you talk 9.  Separate behavior from narrative

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Guidelines

1.  It’s about empathizing. 2.  Listen, even when people go off topic 3.  Context is king – document it, and make

sure the context of research maps to the problem being explored

4.  Start from the assumption that everything you know is wrong

We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? •  Empathy through research •  Framing Problem Spaces •  Generative Ideation •  Prototyping & validation

4 Key Elements to Lean UX

WHAT IS SENSEMAKING? HOW DO WE MAKE SENSE OF THE WORLD SO WE CAN ACT IN IT?

Sensemaking

Karl Weick

“Sensemaking is, importantly, an issue of language, talk, and communication. Situations, organizations, and communities are talked into existence… Sensemaking is about the interplay of action and interpretation rather than the influence of evaluation on choice.”

Bates’ Berrypicking Model

A Berrypicking / Lean Startup Mashup

Meaning exist in the interaction between agents, not in the things themselves”.

- ALICIA JUARRERO

Cynefin

The place of your multiple belongings

affiliations

Dave Snowden

We have found that [our sensemaking framework] helps people to break out of old ways of thinking and to consider intractable problems in new ways… …. It is designed to allow shared understandings to emerge through the multiple discourses of the decision-making group.

We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? •  Empathy through research •  Framing Problem Spaces

•  Generative Ideation •  Prototyping & validation

GENERATIVE IDEATION

Sketch. Pitch. Critique. TECHNICALLY THIS IS CALLED A CHARRETTE.

Focus on the bare minimum to convey your concept

All ideas must map to person’s goals & needs.

Generate lots of design concepts (options*) Present concept as stories

Critique using Ritual Dissent Integrate (steal) & Iterate

Check stories for coherence Converge around testable solution hypotheses

Design Studio

*See Chris Matts Real Options Theory

We have this problem, lets jump in and brainstorm a solution We have a new technology, what can we possibly use it for? Our competitors just launched X; how quickly can we also do X? •  Empathy through research •  Framing Problem Spaces •  Generative Ideation

•  Prototyping & validation

PROTOTYPE & VALIDATE

Minimize TOTAL time through the loop

Prototyping and Testing

Why prototype?

•  Explore • Quickly create testable solution options • Identifies problems before they’re coded • Reflection-in-action*

•  Experiment • Early frequent feedback from customers • Low opportunity cost

•  Evolve understanding of customer behaviors

* Theory in Pracice, Chris Argyris & Donald Schön

What Fidelity?

•  Low fidelity • Paper

•  Medium fidelity • Axure • Omnigraffle • Indigo Studio • Clickable Wireframes

•  High Fidelity • Twitter Bootstrap • jQueryUI • Zurb Foundation

Beware of “endowment effect,” also called the divestiture aversion. Once people invest time/effort “sketching with code,” its very difficult to throw the concept away and explore new options.” Identify what you want to learn, pick the least effort to go through Build > Measure > Learn

From insights, you can create multiple problem & solution hypotheses sets.

It's not about designing the one right solution and refining.

It's about testing many solutions to multiple problem hypotheses.

It's about many small bets.

Maximize Optionality

7 STEPS FOR LIBRARIES

7 Steps

Uncover your patrons’ needs and goals

Formulate hypotheses

Question your assumptions

Collaborate to generate ideas

Run small, tight experiments

Learning isn’t failure

Amplify what works

Questions Worth Asking

What is the future of knowledge creation?

What is the future of reference expertise?

What is the future of knowledge discovery?

What is the future of learning spaces?

What is the future of maker spaces?

CASE STUDY: EBILBIOFILE

Hypothesis

We believe that libraries need high quality MARC records for eResources, and they need them fast, so that their patrons can find the materials they really want as soon as they are available - eBiblioFile

•  Problem Exploration •  Posted to list serves asking if people

suffered from our problem •  Interviewed respondees •  Solution validation •  Hand coded and delivered first batch

within 2 weeks of starting the project •  Scaling •  Are serving more than 300 libraries

in less than 1 year

eBibliofile Lean Process

CASE STUDY: BOUNDLESS

Hypothesis

We believe that library home pages and PACs aren’t destinations. Libraries need to engage where people are online, in ways that build bonds with existing patrons and expose more people to all that libraries have to offer.

•  Found some ugly websites and called the libraries

•  Asked them about their sites •  Built a WordPress template

system based on what THEY told us

•  Launched “MVP” to gather learnings.

Boundless Lean Process

CASE STUDY: LIBRARY.SOLUTIONS

Hypothesis

We believe that libraries that really want new functionality will be early adopters, helping us refine functionality before we push it to broad production.

•  Interviewed 10 people •  Pitched the concept •  Got “letters of intent” •  Grew to over 200 customers in

2 months

LS Process

CASE STUDY: LEANUX NYC

Hypothesis

We believe people want to learn about using Lean and Lean User Experience to drive innovation in their startups and enterprise organizations. Our hypothesis is that people would pay money to attend a three day LeanUX conference. In NYC.

•  Interviewed 20 people •  Created a “Pitch MVP” •  Got 700 Email

Addresses •  Built website •  Charged $295 •  400 attendees •  Huge Success

LeanUX Lean Process

Can we work together?

Do you have some ideas worth exploring?

We are interested in engaging with libraries on:

Ideas you want to test

Problems you want to solve

Let us know…

"My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me

eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb beyond them.

He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.” - Wittgenstein

WILL EVANS Director of Design & Research

TLC Labs / The Library Corporation

Design Thinker-in-Residence

NYU Stern Graduate School of Management

will@tlclabs.co