Libby App - User Experience Discovery
- Category: UX Research/ Discovery
- My Roles/Tasks: Drafting screener questions, building out survey forms, recruiting and interviewing users, affinity mapping, persona creation, competitive analysis.
- Project date: 2020
- Project URL: Slides (personal data redacted)
Timeline
For this group effort, our team worked through the discovery process for Overdrive's Libby app. Libby is an app that allows library patrons to browse, reserve, and check out titles from their library and consume digital content. We filled six weeks with research, user interviews, and data synthesis.
Overview of Libby
A short and sweet description of what the Libby app embodies.
Lending Models
These are the lending models for eBooks. We were suprised to learn that digital content does not provide unlimited users access to endless use of titles. One library may have one or a combination of these licensing models from title to title, or publisher.
Nuance Discovered in Pricing
Librarians are often stuck procuring less expensive or popular books due to their limited budget.
Goals of Discovery Research
Our team's aim was to keep things exploratory, open ended, and make no assumptions. Through interviews, synthesis, and competitve analysis a picture of the e-lending landscape began to materialize.
Library Market Synopsis
Libby is one of an oversaturated market of e-lending competitors. Hence, our red ocean. It is backed by one of, if not the largest, digital content provisioners, OverDrive.
Because of its leverage in the sphere, Overdrive is able to provide users with an experience far beyond most direct competitors using Libby as a conduit.
Retail Market Synopsis
No huge surprise, Amazon dominates the retail eBook market, which is also extremely competitive.
User Interviews
Interviews were conducted with library leaders (librarians, managers, procurement personnel) and patrons. Each interview participant first advanced past a screener survey, and themes of the interviews are listed. All are pretty straight forward, open ended questions to elicit detailed responses without leading participants in any particular direction. One that warrants more explaination is the "Magic Wand" question, which was simply, "If you had a magic wand, what would you change about..."
Interview and Analysis Process
Interviews were conducted by each member of the team. Participant responses were added to virtual post-it notes, which facilitated grouping responses during our synthesis in order to hone in on common threads.
Drawing Conclusions
Using a combination of InVision, Zoom, and Slack, communications were kept 100% virtual. Our team was able to sucessfully work on affinity mapping and data synthesis to draw meaningful conclusions.
Audience Profiles
Our audience fell naturally into two categories: patrons and library leadership.
Personas
A busy, on-demand, and multi device kind of person.
Personas
Our older audience: tech challenged bookworm.
Personas
Our library leader, genuinely happy to help, and extremely stretched thin.
Key Takeaways
Do not grasp complicated licensing and thus are frustrated with waits for popular titles. Technology is an issue for some.
Key Takeaways
Librarians feel stuck helping patrons navigate an app they did not create, and are still learning themselves.
Next Steps
Based on our team's findings, our list of next steps describes areas of focus that will likely yield the best returns on investment.
