Vee Rogacheva, UX Designer.
Workshop explored the challenges and opportunities for publishers to provide an improved online experience for their users. The first part of the workshop looked at the user journey for students and highlight behavioural trends which have an impact on the way students navigate online content. The second part of the workshop, the audience were invited to share and discuss ideas on how to turn the changing user behaviour into an opportunity to improve the way content is accessed and delivered.
5. openathens.org
How students discover
content?
• Search
• Google Scholar
• Video
• Images/Infographic
• Podcasts
• Library portal
• LMS
University
library
• In site search
Publisher’s
website
19. openathens.org
Discussion • How are you addressing trends triggered by new
technology and changing user behaviour?
• Do you have a plan in place to evolve your
products and services?
• What are the blockers to taking action?
Major part of my role involves visiting university libraries across the UK and the US to study students needs and behaviour.
In one of my trips I came across this library in the UK and at the time I was there the place was packed full of students. So I asked the head librarian “Why are there so many students in the library?” And she said “Our students love to spend time in the library.”
…Now look at this space? It is a basement. It just about has windows. People are crammed in this long rolls of desks. It is like a call centre from hell.
Why would someone want to spend time here? Why would students LOVE to spend time here when there are so many much more enjoyable places they could be at?
Can someone guess why students spend time here?
Yes, you guessed it: they’re having troubles accessing library resources remotely. But also, this is what they were told they should do during the library induction. The message was clear: Visit your library to access academic resources.
This quote is something I hear often from students. If asked to login they simply hit back.
Part of the issue is that students don’t know what resources are available to them. If they are faced with a paywall they will not even try to login, even if their institution had subscribed to the content.
You have to understand that the users’ expectations are frames by their experiences on other content platform. And when we are competing for the users’ attention a frictionless user experience is critical. Academic content shares time with all sorts of other important and interesting events in our users lifes.
But often users are faced with cluttered interfaces with conflicting calls to actions.
I’m not picking on anyone here but when you look at a couple of platform one next to another you cans tart to understand why it may be difficult to navigate academic content. This is what students and researchers in general are faces with. No consistencies in the way content is presented, metadata and citations are also different.
And if the user decides to read the whole article they will need to figure out how to login. This all takes time which students simply don’t have.
Other than rise of the products that allow you to bypass the pay wall there are a number of other user behaviour trends that will shape the library experience
In the next couple of years:
There is an every growing increase in pressure for Open Access scholarly content in particularly where research has been funded with public money
We know that users are still very dependent on using a screen device but they are using multiple devices at the same time. A student may start a project on the library computer, continue research on their mobile and make edits on a tablet. And they expect seamless experience regardless of the device they use.
Users inform their research by navigating different types of content: videos and podcasts are particularly interesting as we can see an expodential increase in their use
And finally, the rise of the voice search: “50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020”
Other than rise of the products that allow you to bypass the pay wall there are a number of other user behaviour trends that will shape the library experience
In the next couple of years:
There is an every growing increase in pressure for Open Access scholarly content in particularly where research has been funded with public money
We know that users are still very dependent on using a screen device but they are using multiple devices at the same time. A student may start a project on the library computer, continue research on their mobile and make edits on a tablet. And they expect seamless experience regardless of the device they use.
Users inform their research by navigating different types of content: videos and podcasts are particularly interesting as we can see an expodential increase in their use
And finally, the rise of the voice search: “50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020”