Course summary

This all new for 2022 three-day interactive and highly practical course (for up to 25 participants), led by UX trainer/consultant Andy Priestner, details and sets out the internationally recognised UX Research & Design Process.

The course utilises techniques intended to identify and actively respond to library user needs and behaviours in order to develop and deliver more relevant and user-centric library services.

The UX Process:

After an introduction to the value and purpose of UX, this course offers an exploration of UX over 4 key phases:

1. Discover: researching user needs and behaviours

• Techniques to include: observation and behavioural mapping; interviews; cognitive mapping; user-led library tours; photo interviews
• Followed by practice of these techniques with real library users

2. Define: theming and analysing user research data

• Transcribing the user research data gathered and using affinity mapping to code it.

3. Develop: generating ideas in response to key problems

• Successful ideation techniques and divergent thinking approaches

4. Deliver: creating and testing inexpensive prototypes

• Turning the ideas generated into physical prototypes tested inside and outside the library with users (and non-users) and iterated in response (prototypes might be new space layouts, basic digital resources, promotional materials, alternative wayfinding)

About the Trainer

Andy Priestner, a former librarian at both Oxford and Cambridge University, is an established UX  consultant & trainer who regularly delivers UX training programmes and leads consultancies all over the world (including, pre-pandemic, Australia and New Zealand) in order to recalibrate and re-focus library services around user needs and behaviours.

He created and chairs the international UX in Libraries conference and is the author of the critically acclaimed A Handbook of UX Research & Design in Libraries (which details the 4-phase UX Process around which the course is structured)  which was published last year.