Stories that Illustrate User Needs or Problems

Unsolved problems? My notes

The study yielded the following priorities for the Libraries’ online tools:

• Make discovery easier and more effective
• Incorporate trusted networks in finding tools
• Continue to put links to the Libraries’ services and resources where the users are

As a qualitative approach, a cultural probe tends to generate creative thinking and insight related to a user group’s behavior, rather than statistically significant data results. Nevertheless, results can be coded and analyzed to suggest trends and to move beyond impressions and anecdotes, bringing a larger pattern of behavior into sharper focus.

"Now the student's created software that scans list of contents, fetches the site, parses descriptions of articles from the descriptions given, and prints titles and it asks him, do you want full text or the abstract? The program queries him about 80-90 articles per week and combines the result into digest form.” – Interview notes, Physics graduate student

• My notes: This seems to indicate a need for a way to automate search tasks for a specific topic, useful to ph.d. students

Key implication: The Libraries could meet the vast majority of user needs by focusing on services that support four core areas: research, publication/presentation, coursework, and current awareness.

Even so, many students mentioned that they automatically went to certain resources because they had used them before or because someone they trusted recommended them.

• User need for trusted networks, trusted resources, trusted people, etc., is a user need that we have not met

in the interviews, several graduate students voiced discomfort and a lack of confidence about knowing where to start for finding information about unfamiliar topics. Sometimes, even if they discovered an appropriate resource to search, the poor usability of the interface impeded their ability to locate useful information even though what they sought did exist in the tool.

• User need for paths or trusted methods for unfamiliar topics; anything we can do to improve interfaces
• "Key implication: It appears that the more complex and ill-defined the information task, the more the graduate students in the study relied on familiar resources and contacts to guide them to answers, yet the final result was a lower rate of success. The data suggests that graduate students could benefit from having tools and information that would allow them to expand their network of trusted resources rapidly when confronted with difficult information seeking tasks."

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