Presented at LILAC 2017

1. Library
Services
Informing Information Literacy
through User Experience at
Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu
Scholarly Communication Management Team
Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017

2. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Overview
• Outline of the project
• Intended aims and outcomes
• User Experience element of project
• Research methods
• Data collection
• Data analysis
• Findings
• Outcomes

3. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Outline of the project:

4. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Intended aims and outcomes
• Intended aims
• Review and redesign Olivia format and content
• Enhance online and in-class teaching resources and
support material
• Outcome
• Refreshed design and launch of the results of the
project

5. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
What is User Experience?
‘User Experience is how you feel about every interaction
you have with what’s in front of you in the moment you’re
using it.' (User Testing Blog)
‘User Experience […], is a suite of techniques based
around first understanding and then improving the
experiences people have when using our library services.’
(University of York)

6. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Why User Experience?
• The project team felt it was important to consult students
on their Information Literacy behaviours and needs. To
help inform project outcomes
• Experience from other projects in Imperial Library
Service
• Library Search User Experience work
• User Experience methods for collecting
feedback
• Inspired by the Barbara Fister’s Keynote at LILAC 2015

7. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Research methods
• Research questions for the User Experience work;
• Identify where students need help in terms of their
Information Literacy needs (identifying, finding,
evaluating and using/communicating information in
an ethical way)
• Where students seek help/advice online if they
encounter difficulties?
• Data collection: Focus Group
• Data analysis: Grounded Theory

8. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Research methods: Data collection
• Small scale focus group with 7 questions designed to
explore research questions
• Focus Group sample 9 undergraduates
• Recording
• Note taking and observations
• Journey maps
• Semi structured interviews with Teaching Fellows

9. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
A student's assignment journey

10. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
A student's assignment journey

11. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Problems in the assignment journey

12. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Problems in the assignment journey

13. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Research methods: data analysis
• Grounded theory as a basis for analysis
• Open coding of the Focus Group transcripts. Initial
sweep of the data to start picking out labels
• Second more focused coding was conducted to start to
analyse the labels to draw out themes in relation to the
research question:
• Identify where students need help in terms of their
Information Literacy needs
• Where students seek help/advice online if they
encounter difficulties?

14. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Findings: Identify where students need help
with Information Literacy needs
• Discovery and access issues
• Evaluating source information
• Time pressured
• Where students seek help/advice online if they
encounter difficulties:
• Students are looking for ‘friendly’ advice
• Places students look for support; Library webpages
aren’t always their first port of call.

15. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Outcomes

16. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Summary
• User Experience can offer useful and versatile
techniques
• To help you to build an understanding of students and
their Information Literacy behaviours and experiences
• Inform your teaching and materials
• Can help to target your support

17. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
Acknowledgements:
• Project team; Michael Gainsford, Angela Goldfinch,
Karine Larose, Simon Mackenzie, Katharine Thompson,
Eleni Zazani.

18. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
References:
Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory. Introducing qualitative
methods. 2nd ed. Los Angeles, SAGE.
Charmaz, K. (2008)What is Grounded Theory? In: NCRM Research Methods
Festival [Presentation] available from: http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/208/ [Accessed
9th March 2017]
Dunne, S. (2015) What Can a User eXperience (UX) Approach Tell Us About
the Undergraduate Research Process? [Presentation] Available from:
http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/what-can-a-user-experiennce-ux-
approach-tell-us-about-the-undergraduate-research-process-siobhan-dunne
[Accessed 20th March 2017]
Fister, B. (2015) The Liminal Library: Making Our Libraries Sites of
Transformative Learning. Available from:
http://www.slideshare.net/infolit_group/barbara-fister

19. Library Services
Informing Information Literacy through User experience at Imperial College
Ella Mitchell and Amarjit Sandhu - Imperial College London, Library Services
LILAC conference 11th April 2017
References:
Larose, K. (2015) UX at Imperial Library. Available from:
http://slideplayer.com/slide/7082698/ [Accessed 20th March 2017]
Larose, K., Mackenzie, S., Preater, A. and Barron, S. (2017) Library Search UX
report summer 2016. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/44345
[Accessed 20th March 2017]
University of Hertfordshire (No Date) Grounded theory. Available from:
http://www.health.herts.ac.uk/immunology/Web%20programme%20-
%20Researchhealthprofessionals/grounded_theory.htm [Accessed 20th March
2017]
University of York. (No Date) What is UX? Available from:
http://libinnovation.blogspot.co.uk/p/an-introduction-to-ux.html [Accessed 14th
March 2017]
Winter, J. (2015) What is User Experience? Available from:
https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2015/08/13/what-is-user-experience/ [Accessed
15 March 2017]

20. Library Services
Library
Services
Thank You
Ella Mitchell
E.Mitchell@imperial.ac.uk
Amarjit Sandhu
A.Sandhu@imperial.ac.uk