Assessment:User/UX

The User Experience (UX) Working Group is a subset of the Digital Libraries Federation User Studies Assessment Interest Group and previously named Usability Studies Guidelines and Best Practices Working Group. The working group formed in 2015.

This working group builds on the following work products of previous AIG working groups:

1. A literature review and compiled bibliography
2. The white paper: Surveying the Landscape: Use and Usability Assessment of Digital Libraries

The group in the past has taken a multi-faceted approach to determining the best way to develop guidelines and best practices in user and usability studies related to digital libraries. As the group has developed, they identified a need in the digital library UX community for high-impact UX practices that help grow UX maturity and assistant practitioners in advocating for more resources and buy-in from their institutions.

UX Areas of Investigation

UX mentorship program- We are investigating how to develop a UX mentorship program within the DLF community to help practitioners not only develop their skills but navigate their unique job requirements.

UX resources advocacy- Finding ways to help UX practitioners get buy-in from their administration and gain support for UX initiatives.

There are many other aspects to usability and user studies, and we welcome others who would like to pursue them. Here is where we have shared working areas, and can provide open access for white papers and other results, with excellent visibility. If you would like to join us, please join the Google Group and speak up about your interests.

Get Involved in the working group

The only requirement for participation in a DLF AIG working group is a willingness to dig in and devote a small part of your time contributing to the tools, methods, and body of knowledge on digital library assessment. Attendance at the DLF forum is not a requirement for participation in any of the working groups. Additionally, if your institution is not a DLF member, you can still participate. Learn more about the DLF AIG User Studies/UX Working Group via Open Science Framework and how to get involved

Go here to join our Google Group listserv for formal announcements, outreach, and high-level working group activities report outs via email notifications.

Meetings

We have monthly call-in meetings on the last Friday of every month. See the google group for call-in details.

Projects on Open Science Framework

We use a number of collaborative tools to facilitate our work. We mainly use the Open Science Framework as a central repository to document and store our work. We also use Google Drive and Google Groups.

Digital Libraries User Personas Best Practices

The aim of this project is to create a web resource for digital library (DL) practitioners to reference when creating user personas for development and maintenance of digital libraries. First the the UX Working Group plans to to reach out to libraries, museums, and archives and gather examples of personas designed for DLs. After gathering these resources the group will evaluate them to identify commonalities and differences. A summary of work will then used to support the creation of a best practice guide that is informed by user personas research internal and external to DL practitioners. The final output of this project will be a web resource that includes best practices and highlighted DL user personas from libraries, museums, and archives. This online resource will be made available through the Digital Library Federation.

Inactive Projects

Usability Standardization - Literature Tagging Project

---

Back to the User Studies home page

Back to the Assessment home page