My team is working with WorldCat.org which is the largest global archives and bibliographic database. WorldCat is in a challenging business situation regarding user retention due to increasing competition and information management with expanded content. Our client provided us a initial hypo that building a community will help with the retention rates.
Our Target:
Academia (major group of the worldcat.org current suers)
Our Goal:
Enhance existing WorldCat users by improving their research experience on the site and increasing their engagement.
The Problem:
Low rentaion rates
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Based on the initial hypo, we conducted a direct competitor analysis and indirect competitors to evaluate the hypo and possible community-based optimization opportunties.
SURVEY
To delve into the problem space, we initiated a onlie survey and talked with our target audience to understand their painpoints while sourcing information and attitudes towards community-based solutions.
SEMI-STRUCTURE INTERVIEW
The overview
Findings
We employed affinity mapping to analyze our interview results.
RESEARCH RECAP --> DESIGN CONCEPTS
Research questions
Based on the findings, we redefined our research questions to better guide our design direction:
We conducted "Jobs to be done" to visualize and assist us to keep in mind who are our users and what are their needs
Ideation Development
STORYBOARD
We conducted feedback session to validated our idea. Participants indicated that both the AI and the Research Collaboration Workspace idea could mostly aptly help users research and in turn help the platform retain users. This lead us to concentrate on moving forward with our wireframes in the direction of combining the AI feature with the Research Workspace feature to address the user need of collaboration and community. But users doubled down on a need for moderators.
WIREFRAME
CONCEPT PROPOSAL
We invited 4 UX experts to do the cognitive walkthrough and 5 academic researchers to do the usability test, aiming to evalute the leanability and ease of use for our interfaces.
Here are key findings from the evaluation:
- Most users could complete the tasks appropriately and smoothlythe most common area where people met with blocks was while identifying the genealogy card from the homepageAll users gave positive responses towards the idea of research workspace.
- They believed this system can allow them facilitate the process of finding more and valuable resources, especially by the feature asking subject matter experts.Even though based on feedback from experts, we added supplementary text to describe the main features.
- Users still responded that onboarding is very important especially with older adults who are not too tech-savvy.Users are curious about the mechanism under the credit/badges.UI needs to be improved. The current design is missing some features.
REFLECTION
Knowing where to put our energy/ where to go when to stop/ Making decisions at the right time. We carried too many potential ideas into wireframe portion of the project. Making sure the fidelity of prototypes is up to par with the types of tasks we're asking people to do while evaluating.Learning to work in abstract and trying to find the balance with contextual limits and a desire to create something exciting
