Enhancing Explore – UX Project Report

In early 2024, we decided to investigate the challenges that UCL students face when navigating the library resource discovery service, Explore. As part of this project, the LCCOS UX Group conducted research exercises to gain some insight into how our students use this service. This information will be combined with quantitative data from other research methods, such as heat mapping and benchmarking exercises, to influence the direction of future Explore service improvements.

The UX Group invited ten individual participants to take part in the exercises, selected from a group of volunteers to represent a cross-section of our student customer base. The UX methods used were:

• A five second test to establish first impressions of the Explore landing page.
• A simple card sorting exercise focussed on landing page menu options, to help us determine user priorities and their understanding of terminology.
• Usability testing to better understand the needs and priorities of customers when searching for resources.

These exercises were conducted in March 2024. Several areas of interest emerged, such as:

• Relocating the position of features to improve the instinctive user journey.
• Reconsidering menu item terminology to better represent purpose and improve communication with our users.
• Highlighting useful and underused features.
• Investigating how customers navigate to Explore through search engines.

Having reviewed the data collected from the three exercises, including an analysis of automatic transcripts, the research team produced a series of recommendations to take forward as we enhance Explore. These recommendations included:

• An investigation into the search ranking of the Explore landing page, and how this could be improved.
• Removing superfluous menu options.
• Rearranging the order and location of features to make them more user friendly.
• Conducting further reviews into the use of language.
• Improvements to accessibility in Explore, particularly regarding screen reading software.

Additionally, when evaluating the UX exercises conducted for this project, the research team noted some considerations for future UX work. These include:

• Being mindful of designing exercises to better accommodate and consider skill gaps between participants.
• Exploring alternative methods of volunteer recruitment to encourage the participation of non-student customers.
• Evaluating the benefits of hosting sessions online, instead of in person, to improve the quality of automatic transcription.
• Modifying the design and setup of future UX sessions to remove situational bias and encourage more authentic responses and behaviour.

The full report from the UX group can be found at the following link: Enhancing Explore – UX Project Report.

If you are interested in joining the LCCOS UX Group, or if you have any questions about our work, please contact Jonathan Fowles (j.fowles@ucl.ac.uk) or Bethan Smith (bethan.smith@ucl.ac.uk).

The UX Group plans to produce a UX toolkit in the future that will be available to all teams in LCCOS, compiling a list of resources, guidance documentation and reports from previous projects that may be helpful for anybody planning their own UX research project.