In this presentation for the Michigan Library Association Annual Conference, Lauren Trimble and Chris Bulin presented a framework built using design thinking and the book The Lean Start-Up to give great customer service. Learn how we thought small and used experiments to learn more about our users and meet their needs.

1. Soup to Nuts
Rapid Iteration for
Innovative Customer
Service

2. Introduction
Chris Bulin Lauren Trimble

3. Project Management Quagmire

4. The Lean Start Up

5. Brainstorming

6. Key Performance Indicators
Picture: Compass Study/Calsidyrose/CC2.0

7. SMART KPIs

8. Vision Quest

9. Lean Start Up’s Version
How can you translate a strategy meant for an entire organization to the needs of
your smaller, much more specific grouping?
● We broke down the broader ideas and vocabulary into specific,
experimental stages designed to answer “Should this idea/project live?”
■ Vision
● Strategy
● Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
■ Steer
● Hypothesis: Value and Growth
● Metrics
● Prediction
● Test

10. Practical Magic

11. User Services’ Version
● We made a handy guide that distilled Lean principles and their progress into a
more manageable format
● Determine your vision
● Develop a strategy
● Design a thing
● Determine the value of the thing
● Determine how the thing will grow over time
● Predict how the thing will do
● Decide how to best measure and test the thing
● After running the thing, and waiting a little bit, decide its fate

12. Implementation: Hot Pot
Hypothesis Details
Creating an easier to
navigate tool will increase
use of the About and
Support pages and help
generate leads for
Outreach.
MVP - This project will create a PDF flow chart or decision tree that
will be added to support.jstor.org with links to the related Support and
About pages.
Experiment - The experiment will be to post the PDF to the support
site and add a link to it in our canned responses.
Measurement - We will be measuring the number of hits on this page
to the website and the number of clicks on that page to other pages
of the Support site or onto the About site.
Prediction - Hits to the support site will increase by 5% per month.

13. Hot Pot MVP

14. Implementation: Soup Talk
Hypothesis Details
Users outside of JSTOR will
find value in an informative
and entertaining short video
tutorial, and find that it
humanizes JSTOR.
MVP- Create a Powerpoint that outlines our first Soup Talk video
idea and present it to a teacher, a librarian, and a student. Have
these users fill out a questionnaire for feedback to see if they find
this product valuable.
Experiment- Develop one video, add it to the Support site.
Measurement-The questionnaire will have questions ranging from
1-5 from strongly disagree to strongly agree to gauge how users
feel about the video. The questionnaire will cover usefulness,
clarity, entertainment, and image of JSTOR.
Prediction- Users will find the video informative,entertaining, and
see a positive and inviting image of JSTOR.

15. Implementation: Peanut Gallery
Hypothesis Details
Building a forum on
support.jstor.or will allow
will raise the volume,
frequency and quality of
our interactions with the
communities we support.
The content they create
will be funneled through
a loop of useful
feedback, adding to the
quantity, diversity, and
quality of our feedback.
MVP- We will build a forum on support.jstor.org.
Experiment - The experiment will be to post the forum to the
support site and see if anyone comments.
Measurement - We will track the number of posts and chains
of conversation as well as gauge the quality of the interaction
(i.e. monosyllabic or a paragraph). We will also track the
number of created user accounts.
Prediction - A minimum of 10 new comments a week. Ideally,
we would also see an increase in chains of discussion (i.e.
one topic will garner many comments in lieu of many
individual posts without comments) and an increase in user
accounts, instead of anonymous accounts.

16. Peanut Gallery MVP

17. Blocks

18. Chat Widget Placement
Hypothesis Details
The goal is to provide more
opportunities for users to get
real-time support on the
JSTOR platform.
MVP- Create new chat widgets to be used on various pages of the
platform.
Experiment- Add chat widget to one or more pages where it is not
already located
Measurement- After a minimum of 50 chats are answered from the
User Response Page and Login page widgets, we'll review the
reports and transcripts to looks for themes that support or disprove
the hypothesis.
Prediction- The URP and Login page will elicit more chats with
users than others widgets (Contact Us, Support Site, and Purchase
Workflows). The majority of user questions from these pages will
be about access. User satisfaction will increase as a result of
expanding opportunities for real-time support

19. Implementation: Librarian 101
Hypothesis Details
Create a systematic way to
introduce basic library
concepts to new User
Services Employees.
MVP - This project will create a presentation to contain the concepts
and jargon related to libraries and librarianship that can help
contextualize work in User Services
Experiment - The experiment will be to create materials and a
presentation that incorporate a field trip to see if it helps U.S. folks
understand the librarian perspective on e-resources more fully.
Measurement - We will be asking for feedback from members of
the team after they have been presented with the materials.
Prediction - User Services members will find the course helpful (a
rating of 3 stars or more) to their understanding of how JSTOR
works in an academic library environment.

20. Example Timeline

21. Results

22. Grow Together

23. Possible applications in libraries

24. Questions?

25. References
All gifs courtesy of Giphy.com
JSTOR Support Self-Help Website http://www.support.jstor.org
Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to
Create Radically Successful Businesses. 2011. Print.
XKCD - Honest https://xkcd.com/1146/

26. Thanks!
Lauren Trimble, User Advocacy and Accessibility Specialist
lauren.trimble@ithaka.org
Chris Bulin, Senior Website Support Specialist
chris.bulin@ithaka.org
JSTOR Support
support@jstor.org
Twitter: @JSTORSupport

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