The role of providing free access to information and services for everyone is central to the mission and culture of the library. Or as the Atlantic puts it:

“Libraries step in to fill gaps and offer help when normal channels are inaccessible.”

On the other hand, the workplace has changed a lot in recent decades. Between the digital revolution and market globalisation, people need to learn new, specialised skills to adapt. Yet, as the Center for American Progress remarks:

“Workers have little room in their budgets to pay for more training. [...] In the current economy, workers are increasingly on their own, without sufficient tools and the structures they need to succeed.”

Which begs the question: how can the library help the community with their career?

Let’s look at the market.

We looked at various competitors, including what libraries currently offer, but also job boards and online platforms:

We also met with an expert from the Adult Library Marketing Association (ALMA) and the American Library Association (ALA). She told us many things, but one point that stood out was that most people don’t know how useful libraries can be:

“And that's the big challenge for libraries—getting the word out about what their offerings are. Because I think a lot of people have a misconception of what the library is. […] And so that's a huge challenge is making sure that people know it's there for everyone. It's like, did you know that your library has this? Or did you know that your library has education? Not necessarily.”

What do users need?

We wanted to know what people want and need in their job search, so we interviewed 10 potential users (aged 22+) who wanted to either start a new career, build their current career, or change career. Here’s what they said:

We found out that our participants expressed strong emotional connections to libraries: they want to use and help libraries, but don’t know how.

Also, users are developing their career online, from looking for jobs, to taking classes, to finding resources to continue their education.

We also conducted a survey to gather more data. We received 76 responses, which told us more about their needs and difficulties:

Particularly, we couldn’t help but notice respondents didn’t feel secure in their job. They are highly educated, but only a big half of them are employed full time, and many others are considering switching careers.

How can we help?

After our research informed us on our future users, we built our personas:

(click = big)

We initially thought we would use Emily as our primary persona, since many of our survey respondents were working in education and this persona was a library member. However, looking back at the issue at hand made us change our mind: the community needs the library’s help to get career training. This corresponds more to Felix.

To help keep this in mind, we formulated our problem statement:

The career builder needs to be guided to relevant resources (books, videos, courses, etc.) and connect with their community in a simple and organised way so that they can feel empowered in their professional journey.

Along with it, we used our research to define guiding principled for our design:

Finally, we wanted our product to offer a strong value proposition:

Trusted career help. For free.

Effortlessly connect with your local library’s vast collection of world-class support to build a successful career.

Wait … one more step.

Before jumping into it, though, we had an important decision to take: which platform should we target? Despite it wasn’t specifically mentioned in our brief, we felt our stakeholder expected a mobile app … but that’s not what users wanted! We strongly recommended for a mobile website instead, and built a case for it:

1. A website would be more cost-effective for libraries.

2. It would put the content forward, and make it accessible through a search engine.

3. It would be easier to integrate with both partners’ and current libraries’ websites.

4. Most importantly, users didn’t want to install an app. They wanted a site they could access whenever they’d need or want it.

However, this meant we had to accommodate users with different paths. For instance, one could access the website through the homepage, or through a search engine’s link. Different users may have different goals or flows, but all need access to library ressources!

Let’s make it happen!

An important issue we noticed during our research was that ressources weren’t usually organised in a way that made sense to users. But we wanted our product to be intuitive. So we did a card-sorting exercise, in which our users created themselves 3 major groups. This informed our organisation and labeling.

In parallel to this exercise, we sketched many ideas, iterated on them and improved them with the help of a sitemap, different flowcharts, etc. After 5 different iterations and as many informal tests, we built wireframes we could confidently deliver to our stakeholder. As an example, here are a few versions of our homepage:

Meet the Career Center!

Let’s put it to the test.

While we were designing our wireframes, we ran a second survey to make sure we were going in the right direction. Only 11 respondents passed our screening questions, and they mostly confirmed our design decisions so far, but there were a few surprises as well. We used those to rearrange our content in a more meaningful way.

Then, when our last mid-fidelity prototype was ready, we organised a proper usability test. We gathered 5 potential users that fit our personas, and gave them 2 tasks to review different aspects of the website. Here’s what we learned from them:

First, they received the message loud and clear! They understand what we are trying to do, and like how we do it. Particularly, he intuitive content organisation was a big success for us. However, there was still room for improvement:

We still need to make our site easier to use. Notably, ressource labels should be clearer. Also, we need to upset the positives, since some users didn’t understand that we offer (all) our quality content for free.

What’s next?

This project is over for us, but we didn’t want to leave it without a few recommendations for those who would follow in our steps.

1. We still feel (and our users seem to agree) that there is work to be done in refining our 3 main categories. We would recommend a second card sorting exercise for that.

2. Users were surprised—but pleased—that booking career coach included a matching questionnaire. We tried designing a few options to make it less of a jolt while also selling the positives, and we would recommend to conduct some A/B testing to check them.

3. Last but not least: now that we have wireframes for a mobile website, we recommend to make tablet and desktop versions for a truly responsive design.

What I learned.

One thing I didn’t mentioned earlier: during ideation, we … tried a few ideas (obviously). Among others, we tried a platform to help people use their library, or a search engine to know in which library a resource is. In the end, we realised our stakeholder was insisting on career help because it’s the one thing they struggle with! Sometimes, things just work, and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

Also, it’s always interesting to work with a distributed team. We were in California, New York, and France. Makes for an interesting blend of cultures and timezones. While we were not working, we spent quite a lot of time chatting and learning from each other’s cultures.

© 2020 – Alexandre Ultré