During the process of collecting data for the study room user experience project and the library website redesign project, I co-led the development of library user personas. Personas are fictional representations of users that represent common expectations, needs, and desires of a given product or service. The goal of these personas is to assist library workers in creating more user-centered services through a better understanding of users. These research-informed personas were created based on the data collected in the aforementioned studies, and data dossiers of different user types were presented to an internal UX working group for analysis. I facilitated a workshop with the working group to use members’ skills and knowledge to code the data, and members then used their findings to create drafts of the user personas.
The drafts of the personas then went through multiple rounds of revisions to ensure their accuracy, and were vetted by the working group. The final personas represented the varying experiences, expectations, and information needs of SJSU undergraduate students, graduate students, staff members, and faculty members. Particular to the lower division undergraduate persona, was that this group of users typically discussed how much they like to explore campus and campus services. Thy were/are excited about college, and are eager to learn as much as they can. This differed from upper division undergraduate students who typically felt they were already aware of the resources they needed to succeed in college (even when it was clear that there were resources they were unaware of).
The final user personas were presented during a library-wide meeting to demonstrate their use and value, and final versions were emailed to every library employee. While library employees may have used the personas for a number of purposes, I have been directly informed of the following major uses: 1) by library employees who performed an audit of the library’s research and topic guides and 2) by a Unified Library Management System committee examining search behaviors.
My work with user experience methods in the library, specifically the development of user personas, has led to invitations to provide guest lectures at SJSU. I have lectured in seven courses to date, and I have covered the basic principles of user personas including types, benefits, distribution, and usage. I have additionally incorporated student activities within these lectures to provide students with hands-on experience in the development of user personas. This activity is mutually beneficial, as it provides the library with student-defined personas that are representative of common experiences of SJSU undergraduate students.
Michael J Aguilar 