Designing for Digital

Most companies consider strong product management to be the “glue” that holds together products as they are being conceived of and built, and most companies treat product management as either a marketing or an engineering activity. But modern startups like Airbnb and large corporations like JetBlue or Starbucks have proven that industry disruption is possible not by focusing on adding features or just improving sales, but instead by focusing on providing deep, meaningful engagement to the people that use their products or services. This engagement is achieved by designing products that seem as though they have a personality, or even a soul. These products feel less like manufactured artifacts and more like good friends.
Design doesn’t refer only to aesthetics or usability, although these are things consumers are most likely to notice or appreciate. Design is both a noun and a verb. It can mean the visual or tactical quality of a product, as well as the process by which products are conceived. Design is a more comprehensive way of thinking about people and human behavior than engineering or marketing. It is a product development process that uses empathy with a community of potential consumers in order to identify problems to solve. Design leverages a certain way of thinking in order to infer solutions to those problems that will have meaningful emotional appeal, and a strong market fit.
In this talk, you’ll learn how to apply that process yourself using these four steps:
- Identify product/market fit, by seeking signals from communities of users
- Identify behavioral insights, by conducting ethnographic research
- Sketch a product strategy, by synthesizing complex research data into simple insights
- Define the product details, using visual representations to simplify complex ideas

This is part of the Designing for Digital Conference.  Learn more at www.designingfordigital.com.

Like any large structure, the process of building a library website starts long before the first line of code is written: budgets, RFPs, timelines, identifying (and balancing) the needs and preferences of diverse stakeholders, representing complex services and structures -- and all in a design that pleases everyone and complies with brand standards. How do we ensure that overarching concerns like user experience, content strategy and governance, and accessibility don’t simply fall by the wayside as the project progresses? In this session, Courtney Greene McDonald, Head of Discovery & Research Services at Indiana University Libraries, and Rick Cecil, Director of User Experience at Bluespark Labs share five common challenges experienced in library website redesign projects, with tips and insights drawn from their contrasting perspectives from inside and outside the library. Attendees will come away with processes, techniques and methodologies to tackle these common challenges, even before the first wireframe is sketched.

 

This is part of the Designing for Digital Conference.  Learn more at www.designingfordigital.com.

Quality web content is absolutely essential to the user experience, yet it is all too often neglected on library websites. Let’s give content the attention it deserves. In this practical session, learn how to implement a strategy to care for the entire lifecycle of your web content.

This is part of the Designing for Digital Conference.  Learn more at www.designingfordigital.com.

Designing and developing interfaces devoid of understanding the needs and behaviors of your users can lead to fragmented user interactions and interfaces. In this session I’ll discuss some UX strategies and methods-including customer journeys, scenarios, and personas-we've incorporated into product development that ensure the user is central to the process.

This is part of the Designing for Digital Conference.  Learn more at www.designingfordigital.com.

Updating an academic library website to current design expectations can involve an enormous amount of time, requiring testing and development in a number of areas that affect the user’s ultimate experience. This session uses the recent update to the [http://www.library.unt.eduUNT Libraries’ website] as a case study in guerrilla tactics, discussing our study of analytics data and peer sites, adoption of the bootstrap library for rapid development, early html prototyping, patron interviews, and good commons sense in our typographic choices and content strategy as we developed both a mobile-responsive site and bento-box style search application.  We’ll also take a detour into the world of device-based testing and demonstrate how in-browser testing, paired with a small collection of phones and tablets made troubleshooting the design process far easier, how having these types of devices makes sense as a public service within libraries in general, and some of the new user testing tools/toys we have on hand to bring user testing in the libraries up to a whole new level in the coming months and years.

 

This is part of the Designing for Digital Conference.  Learn more at www.designingfordigital.com.

Last year, the New York Public Library established a new department- Department of Digital Experience. With a wide reaching range of services- from cultural programs, education programs, exhibitions, and traditional library services, the NYPL has begun to shape a digital strategy that will serve literacy students, educators, researchers, tourists, families and more. The new department supports existing programs and services, and will explore new opportunities for applications of digital technologies to improve and enhance customer service, program operations, user experience and access to information.

Frank Migliorelli, an experience designer who took the reigns as Director of Digital Experience last July, will talk about the challenges he’s uncovered as this new initiative helps to transform one of the world’s largest library systems. From redeveloping a new website, the approach to digitizing and activating a vast group of collections and archives, and bringing interactive, digital experiences to a traditional artifact-based exhibit program, he’ll share his ideas of creating user experiences that will not only transform NYPL’s on-line world, but also impact and enhance the digital/physical connection between our customers, the famous lion flagship building, the branches, and the NYPL community all over the world.

 

This is part of the Designing for Digital Conference.  Learn more at www.designingfordigital.com.