91´«Ã½

CHICAGO — 91´«Ã½ Editions announces a new facilitated eCourse . Amanda Goodman and Michael Schofield will serve as the instructors for this six-week facilitated eCourse starting on Feb. 2, 2015.

User Experience Design (UX) is a process used to enhance customer experience with products or services by focusing on ease-of-use and analysis of customer experience. While this approach has primarily been applied in web design, knowledge of UX can help librarians improve patron experience in both the physical and digital realms.

In this eCourse, UX experts Amanda Goodman and Michael Schofield will demonstrate how you can use UX design principles to improve a wide variety of library services for both patrons and staff. By learning about the UX design process, you’ll learn techniques that will allow you to take a given aspect of your library’s services, gather and analyze data that measures user engagement and satisfaction, and use those findings to make your patrons happier.

During each week of the eCourse, you’ll learn about different UX techniques and then complete a small, real-world exercise where you’ll apply that technique. As the instructors will emphasize throughout the course and through the course assignments, these are principles that can be applied across the spectrum of library services. The techniques you learn—skills like executing focus groups, data collection and analysis, participatory design and more—can be applied anywhere from the website to the front desk.

By the end of this eCourse, you will be able to:

• identify antipatterns, pain-points and opportunities for improving UX of your library website and in-house signage;
• communicate data from user tests, analytics, and other best-practices research to administrators in terms that effectively sell the benefits of user-driven design to stakeholders who may otherwise under-prioritize library web services;
• predict and address design and usability challenges based on forward-thinking axioms;
• implement several high-return, low- or no-budget usability tests and know what to do with the results;
• understand the role of library content and know how to develop a scalable and impactful content strategy;
• walk away with basic best practices of design and typography that have huge implications for the usability of your website and physical spaces and that can be implemented even without being a designer.

eCourse outline

• Introduction to UX
• Developing Personas
• Card Sorting and Participatory Design
• Content Strategy
• Design and Typography
• Analytics
• Signage
• Survey/Focus Group

About the Instructors

Amanda L. Goodman is the user experience (UX) librarian at Darien Library, a public library in Connecticut. In this position, she planned, implemented and manages a busy digital media lab. Author of "The Comparative Guide to WordPress in Libraries: A LITA Guide," she has also written articles for UX Magazine and Library Journal. With Schofield she cohosts a podcast about UX and libraries called and blogs about her work at . Find her on Twitter as .

Michael Schofield is a front-end developer specializing in UX and design for libraries. He has written a number of articles and gives consistently well-rated talks about future friendly design and development, content strategy, antipatterns and speed. He curates , runs a popular developer night, teaches junior high school students to write Sass and animate CSS Pandas, and is a WordCamp Organizer. He is currently Librarian of Web Services at the Alvin Sherman Library, Research, and Information Technology Center in Florida.

Registration for this 91´«Ã½ Editions facilitated eCourse, which begins on DATE, can be purchased at the . Participants in this course will need regular access to a computer with an internet connection for online message board participation, viewing online video, listening to streaming audio (MP3 files), and downloading and viewing PDF and PowerPoint files.

publishes resources used worldwide by tens of thousands of library and information professionals to improve programs, build on best practices, develop leadership, and for personal professional development. 91´«Ã½ authors and developers are leaders in their fields, and their content is published in a growing range of print and electronic formats. Contact 91´«Ã½ Editions at (800) 545-2433 ext. 5843 or editionscoursehelp@ala.org.

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