2016 LibTech Conference

Library staff know the bizarre tricks and jargon we use to navigate our system and websites while our users continue to struggle and never get as adjusted. The University of Minnesota Libraries have committed to running monthly web usability tests in-house that illustrate the user’s perspective. These tests guide us in implementing changes to our system and websites.

With little more than a spare computer, Skype, and a group of diligent and willing staff, we’ve been able to learn incredibly useful things about our web sites and applications. In this session, we’ll describe our process, some examples of evaluations we’ve run, what we’ve done with the information, lessons we’ve learned along the way, and we’ll show you how you too can run usability tests at your library.