Presentation held at Liber 2016 in Helsinki by Eva Dahlbäck and Martin Wincent In the library community we often considers us experts of what our users need from us and from that we develop services that we think they need, considering that our user groups are big and diverse. But do users need these services? Do they use it as much as we thought they would do? And if the services aren’t so frequently used, why is that the case? Was there no need or can our users just not find them? To answer these questions we have used “Service design”. The method “Service design” is quite new in the library sector and has its origins in product design but has gradually applied to a wide range of companies and organisations. In recent years, we at Stockholm University library, have thinking more and more about what our users want from us. Do we meet 10 000 users’ needs, are they as happy when they leave as when they came. Are we doing the right things and are they used? Because we did not have the skills to do this kind of investigation with in our organization, we started looking for companies that could perform a service design project with us. In addition, we felt that it is far too easy to be close to the product, so an outsider’s view could give us a new perspectives. The company we chose to work with is called Transformator Design. We gave Transformator Design the assignment that together with us find out what students and researchers expectations and their needs from the library. What part those the library play in the users' professional lives? What works well, what could work better and how? We also had an overall aim for the project; for everyone in the library to get a unified view of what users need and a common understanding of what to do in future developments to create high user value of library services. That is to say better user experience. The basic premise for the project is to have three interview and analysis loops, with about 20 interviewees per loop. Total time for one qualitative interview session it approximately 30-60 minutes. The interviews took place either on campus or through pre-booked telephone interviews, based on a list of informants provided by the library. After the interviews, Transformator went through the material and looked for patterns and repetitive behaviours, they search for saturation of a particular behaviour or need; which means it is so recurrent, in various interviews, it is worth investigating further. After each loop Transformator reported to us what finds insights and behaviours they had made. At these meetings, we had the opportunity to express our opinions and help to see what was important for us investigate further in the next loop. Based on the result of previous loops they narrowed down their questions to focus on saturated behaviour. A total of 55 people were interviewed, different users for each loop, not to get caught up in a few people's needs and wishes.

1. Service Design as Method
–
Library Services Developed
From User’s Needs

2. How do they need us?

3. Stockholm University Library
• 60 000 students & 5 000 employees
• 10 000 visitors in the library and on
the webb

4. Information World

5. The Project

6. The Process

8. The Result

9. Behavioural patterns

10. Our reflections
● We didn’t quite get what we expected,
we got something more valuable
● Suspicions confirmed!
● Tools to work with
● Fraction of the time compared to
if we would have done it ourselves
● Lessons for future
● Outsider point of view

11. Prototypes

12. Thank you!
Eva Dahlbäck Martin Wincent
eva.dahlbäck@sub.su.se martin.wincent@sub.su.se
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