2018-08-22 Core Design Team (subgroup to discuss user testing)
Date
Aug 22, 2018
Attendees
@Jackie Sipes
@Rachel Cox (Unlicensed)
@Gabe Galson
Goals
Discuss gathering user feedback on website homepage mockup.
Discussion items
At the last website design core team meeting, the group agreed that Rachel, Jackie, and Gabe would meet and begin generating ideas for gathering user feedback on Rachel's latest homepage mockup.
We discussed generally the need for evidence-based decisions regarding content on the library homepage. Currently, the “CTA” or “call-to-action” buttons on the mockup reflect the top user tasks identified in the user survey from Fall 2017. However, other content items such as ‘News & events’ are ‘political’ decisions. We should be able to explain our rationale for decisions about homepage content and language.
We discussed the need for a UX group that looks at both the website and Blacklight since these are closely connected and users do not distinguish the difference. Gabe and Rachel would both like to serve on this group.
We discussed a few potential ideas for user testing the mockup PDF and also generated a list of questions/unknowns about the site that need clarification prior to gathering feedback from stakeholders.
Potential research questions related to website homepage mockup:
Are users able to find content about library services, collections, buildings, spaces, etc. from the library homepage?
Are users top/most important tasks represented on the library homepage?
Are link names/categories on the homepage meaningful to users (e.g. the top navigation menu items 'Research,' 'Services,' etc.)?
Potential test methods:
User testing of clickable PDFs with students and library staff & open-ended follow-up questions
Identify top user needs and base task scenarios on these — what are the top tasks users trying to accomplish when they visit the website?
Possibilities: Rachel designs three different mockups, and we aim to figure out which is best.
Questions we have about the homepage:
What content/links are available under each of the top navigation menu items (About, Research, Services).
Is ‘Research’ a link of research guides? Databases?
Are we creating this as a static page? Or is it dynamically generated? Have we decided what goes there exactly?
What is our rationale for placing About, Research, Services as the items in the top navigation?
Should we include a link to chat (that connects and pops out the chat box) and the Ask a Librarian suite of services in the top navigation?
What content appears under the CTA Help with Research? What content appears under CTA Print My Paper (should this be a more general link to library tech like printing, scanning, computers, software, etc. info)?
Are there any static secondary pages, or are all secondary pages generated from the linked metadata? If all are dynamically generated pages, what content displays when a user clicks a link to ‘Services’ or ‘Research’? Would ‘Services’ display a list of all services, or would it display categorized services such as on Indiana U’s page?
What links will be displayed in the footer? Right now, we are conceiving of it as a “catch-all,” but would every single content type and entity be listed? Would all of these necessarily be of interest to users? We need to identify what exactly would go here.
What is the timeline for content creation for each entity type?
We want a full site map fleshed out before completing the home page, to ensure that all web pages can be navigated to. The navigation needs to be completely mapped out before going any further with this. (Rachel)
What is the timeline for indexing of content in BL (website, databases, LibGuides, etc.); do we need to plan for linking to static pages for resources like databases? (Jackie)