The website redesign project team is close to completing baseline usability testing, examining how student and faculty users complete common tasks on our site. Through this study, we’re gaining a better understanding of where usability problems lie and how we should prioritize and present various pieces of content on the site. Listening to users speak their thought process aloud is very enlightening, allowing us to learn a lot about their site usage and perceptions even beyond the steps they take to complete the assigned tasks. We’ve even learned a bit about what we’re doing right!
As with the brand and messaging survey, we were happy to see a huge amount of interest in usability testing across units and user communities, and we’ve gathered a lot of valuable data that is steering how we move forward with the design of each site. We’ve also gathered a pool of people who were unable to participate in this study but are interested in being involved in future studies, which will make our next outreach efforts more streamlined.
Local Library Owner groups are currently meeting with NewCity to workshop some prototype ideas, informed by analyses of all the discovery and audience research data gathered to date: stakeholder interviews, analytics, brand and messaging workshops and surveys, and usability/perception testing. These prototypes are just pen-and-paper outlines so far; NewCity will take a lot of inspiration and ideas from them, then will develop some more detailed and concrete options for us to explore. Over the course of the fall semester, we’ll get a real sense of how the sites are going to look and function, and content development will begin.
We’ll be presenting at a central forum sometime early in the fall semester, so look out for an announcement about a date and time for that presentation.
As always, you’re welcome to reach out anytime with questions or comments. Send us an email: webservices@libraries.rutgers.edu.
