Libraries as Community Hubs
Local libraries serve their communities by providing access to information, technological resources, activities, and events. While many libraries are adapting to a digital world, they are limited by their budgets, as well as their reputation as a potentially outdated cultural institution.
Role: Competitive Research | User Interviews | Journey Mapping | Mobile Design & Prototyping
The Challenge
Build a digitally inclusive community in order to strengthen the library’s relationship with the public and keep up with the diverse needs of its communities.
The Role of Libraries Today
Through a combination of domain research, SME interviews, contextual inquiries, and user interviews, we determined that:
The public library still provides essential services at zero cost while competing media services and co-working spaces offer more contemporary perks
The modern library increasingly prioritizes the social gathering space over the provisioning of resources
Literacy now crosses many platforms
Insight: Technology is the most common trend in library usage; patrons often visit the library wanting to learn how to use computer software and Makerspaces. The library is seen as a safe and inspiring community space used for educational discussions, book clubs, movie showings, craft nights, and similar events.
Photo © Bailey Hicks
User Personas
We focused on existing library members after meeting and interviewing patrons who were at the library as students, freelancers, professionals, and unemployed individuals.
The Media Enthusiast: Penny uses the library to borrow books and movies, gather for grad school group projects, and as a place to take the children she babysits. She perceives the library as a communal resource and wants to maximize the benefits of her membership by using library resources as they pertain to her personal interests. She doesn’t currently utilize these benefits because she's not sure what exactly they entail, and if or when she has access to use them.
The Novice Freelancer: Sam is a freelance illustrator who uses the library as a space to work throughout the week. Co-working spaces are outside of his budget, but he enjoys the museum-like interior of his library and the inspiration that comes with being around other members of the public. Sam wishes he had more access to job-related advice and information. If he knew there were hosted events that aligned with his interests, he would be interested in participating.
The Media Enthusiast’s library journey
The Novice Freelancer’s library journey
Why People Go To the Library
They value the physical space
They want to socialize with others who share their interests
They’re interested in attending library events even if they never have before
Public interest in library events doesn’t always translate to attendance, due to a lack of information and assurance about those events
Insight: Library patrons wanting to attend and organize events look for ways to connect with the community, gather attendees, and generate event enthusiasm, but there was no central, organized channel for them to find, create, and promote library programs.
How might we design a digital solution that connects library patrons with their community, and still honors the library as a physical space?
Design Concepts
Looking at the current state of both the Chicago and New York Public Library’s online presence, we noticed disjointed platforms and cumbersome navigation.
Because many of our users were Apple device owners who stopped by the library while on-the-go, we planned to design for mobile iOS.
Inspired by event and discovery-centric apps like Classpass, Eventbrite, and Spotify, our design team creates a series of potential design sketches.
Narrowing Down Our Focus
Conducting a card sort exercise helped us design a user-oriented site map.
We iterated and digitized the design to focus on one main task: finding and RSVPing to a library event. This would add a greater deal of interaction to the existing event discovery system and it would mimic the ways that users browsed for books and media.
Discovering Library Events
The solution is an app that centralizes free, library-hosted events which helps users easily find events that meet their interests and connect with their local library community.
Design Outcomes
Users received a welcoming impression of the onboarding interest selector
Users appreciated the “add to calendar” option and digital library card feature
Users thought the layout of the account page felt familiar and intuitive
However, they preferred to search from the bottom nav rather than the top
With the library as a public service, I felt personally invested in the need to serve as wide a range of users as possible. While many ideas were scrapped, it was helpful for the team to return to research and continuous testing to drive our final decision. Rather than trying to create something that supported every single library resource available, we were able to design a feasible digital solution still focused on bringing the community together.