More than Usable: Library Services for Humans

As Experience designers, we're interested in more than just products, services, and websites. But our toolkit looks remarkably like the toolkit product designers use: design for tasks, hope emotions will follow. But experience is big, and emotions aren't just the outputs from using something. We're going to need more than science to explain experience--we'll need philosophy, literature, poetry, and more.

In this talk, I explore how phenomenology (the branch of philosophy that deals with experience), metaphor, and frozen space urine can help us design better experiences for our library users by putting people and experiences first.

(This talk was the closing keynote at UX Lib: User Experience in Libraries Conference, Cambridge, UK, March 17-19, 2015.)

Transcript

1. MORE THAN
   USABLE
   LIBRARY SERVICES
   FOR HUMANS
   MATTHEW REIDSMA
   GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY
   

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2. Photo: NASA
   

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3. Photo, Audio NASA
   

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4. Photo, Audio NASA
   A MYRIAD
   OF STARS
   

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7. Names of the Sea, p.233
   The stories told by numbers and
   research are quite different from the
   stories we tell ourselves and each
   other. This is not to say that either is
   wrong.
   “
   Sarah Moss
   

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8. TASKS
   EXPERIENCE
   

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9. We tend to talk about
   transportation as if the ultimate
   goal were mere movement,
   measured in speed, time and
   capacity.
   “
   Emily Badger
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/29/cutting-edge-transportation-maps-will-change-how-we-understand-and-plan-cities/
   

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10. The ultimate goal of
    transportation, though, isn't
    really to move us. It's to
    connect us -- to jobs, to
    schools, to the supermarket.
    “
    Emily Badger
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/04/29/cutting-edge-transportation-maps-will-change-how-we-understand-and-plan-cities/
    

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11. Your members don’t come to
    the library to find books, or
    magazines, journals, films or
    musical recordings.
    “
    Hugh Rundle
    http://hughrundle.net/2012/04/04/libraries-as-software-dematerialising-platforms-and-returning-to-first-principles/
    

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12. They come to hide from reality
    or understand its true nature.
    They come to find solace or
    excitement, companionship or
    solitude.
    “
    Hugh Rundle
    http://hughrundle.net/2012/04/04/libraries-as-software-dematerialising-platforms-and-returning-to-first-principles/
    

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13. [Libraries] let people transform
    themselves through access to
    information and one another.
    “
    Andromeda Yelton
    andromedayelton.com/blog/2015/02/16/c4l15-keynote-transcript/ Photo: Molly Tomlinson photoclave.com/
    

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14. TASKS
    EXPERIENCE
    

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15. Photo: Minneapolis Star Tribine, http://www.startribune.com/local/west/265401331.html
    

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16. http://www.uscis.gov/mye-verify/self-check
    

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17. Usability
    

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18. Usability
    

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19. We just don’t know if [our designs]
    work or not until we evaluate the
    subjective experience of the people
    using them.
    “
    Victor Lombardi
    Why We Fail, p. 10
    

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22. TECHNOLOGY
    AS TOOL
    

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23. TECHNOLOGY
    AS ECOLOGY
    

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24. A good science fiction story
    should be able to predict not the
    automobile, but the traffic jam.
    “
    Frederik Pohl
    

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27. BEING-IN-THE-
    WORLD
    

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28. Instead of asking, “How can we
    know about the world?” Heidegger
    asked, “How does the world reveal
    itself to us through our encounters
    with it?”
    “
    Paul Dourish
    Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT Press: 2004.
    

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29. Meaning provides a facet of usability
    that forces designers to think past
    function into the domains of culture,
    language, and everyday practice.
    “
    Thomas Wendt
    Design for Dasein: Understanding the Desgin of Experiences, p.36
    

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30. When our tools are broken, we
    feel broken. And when
    somebody fixes one, we feel a
    tiny bit more whole.
    “
    Lev Grossman
    qtd. in Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, p. 473-74.
    

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31. PRESENT-AT-HAND
    READY-TO-HAND
    

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32. qtd. in Dourish, Paul. Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT Press: 2004.
    As we act through technology that
    has become ready-to-hand, the
    technology itself disappears from our
    immediate concerns. We are caught
    up in the performance of the work.
    “
    Martin Heidegger
    

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33. BREAKDOWN
    

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34. There is a constant movement
    between present-at-hand and ready-
    to-hand in everyday life, and
    designing with that movement in
    mind is the job of experience
    designers.
    “
    Thomas Wendt
    Design for Dasein: Understanding the Desgin of Experiences, p.155
    

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35. User-friendliness is not merely an
    issue of the number of errors made
    per unit of time. It is rooted in the
    confidence of being able to handle
    disruptions.
    “
    Klaus Krippendorff
    The Semantic Turn: A new foundation for design.
    

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36. BEYOND
    TODAY
    

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37. RETHINK USABILITY
    1
    2
    3
    

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38. RETHINK USABILITY
    1
    2
    3
    TEST TO LEARN, NOT PERFECT
    

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39. RETHINK USABILITY
    1
    2
    3
    TEST TO LEARN, NOT PERFECT
    DESIGN FOR BREAKDOWNS
    

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40. “The Space Between You and Me,” The Manual, Issue #1, 2012.
    Good technology makes us feel
    like we are inching closer to
    who we truly want to be.
    “
    Frank Chimero
    

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41. PEOPLE
    YOUR LIBRARY IS
    

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42. Junod, Tom. “Can You Say...Hero?” Esquire. November, 1998.
    We make so many connections
    here on earth. Look at us—I’ve
    just met you, but I’m investing in
    who you are, and who you will
    be, and I can’t help it.
    “
    Fred Rogers
    

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43. THANKYOU
    

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44. THANKYOU
    

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