Library Service Design: A LITA Guide to Holistic Assessment, Insight, and Improvement

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Description

Service design is a holistic, co-creative, and user-centered approach to understanding user behavior for creating or refining services. Use this LITA Guide to help as a toolkit for implementing service design studies and projects at all types of libraries. It begins with directions for how to create a service design team and assembling a user working group for your library and move through the various phases in a service design journey. The authors outline the tools required to gain insights into user behavior and expectation and how to diagnose the difference between a symptom and a problem users face when interacting within the library environment. The guide features a series of examples that the service design team can use to learn how to work with library staff and patrons to find out what current user experience is like and how to refine services to better meet user expectations. Learn how to: create service blueprints - to outline the service delivery model and understand pain points and places where services can be refined create customer journey maps - to better understand the actual paths taken by users to fulfill a service. find the right tool for the situation so you can make an informed decision on usage create an ethnographic program of your own tailored to your library environment understand how assessment and post-implementation is key to any projects success create a service design plan that fits your library and patronage This book is a toolkit, not a step-by-step, paint-by-the-numbers book. It is geared towards libraries of all types and sizes and will provide tools that any library can use and ideas for developing a service design project that fits within the means of your library so that your project will be meaningful, useful, and sustainable. While several books have been written on how to implement service design, this book will be the first to explain how to practice service design in libraries.

Reviews

This book helps you to look at everything your library does as a service to discover how all those services intersect with each other and impact your users. The goal is to make a better overall user experience. The authors are both librarians at Reed College Library in Portland, Ore. This book stems from their experiences implementing a service design mentality at their academic library. They have spent quite a few years studying and implementing the ideas and have condensed their knowledge into this practical book. * Online Searcher *
If you want to help reduce friction between your librarys users and services, then read this book. Joe Marquez and Annie Downey present a holistic, user-centered approach to creating silo-spanning services that satisfy and delight. -- Matthew Reidsma, Web Services Librarian, Grand Valley State University
Service design is about creating and assessing services holistically, and provides a powerful framework for optimizing the user experience. In this approachable, practical, and easy-to-read guide, the authors promote systems thinking, encourage us to view services with users in mind, and provide an adaptable set of tools for implementing service design in different contexts. The authors inspire us to get into the mindset of our users and improve all touchpoints they experience. Its a must-read if you want to think bigger, improve services and systems across channels, and ultimately make decisions that will delight your users. -- Rebecca Blakiston, User Experience Librarian, University of Arizona Libraries
This practical, wise volume is packed with insights and tools that will inspire and empower you to rethink business as usual at your library. I cant wait to share it with my team. -- Courtney Greene McDonald, Head, Discovery & Research Services, Indiana University Libraries

Author Bio

Joe Marquez is currently the Web Services Librarian at Reed College in Portland, OR. He has presented and written on topics related to website usability and marketing of the library. His current research involves service design in the library environment. He has an MLIS from the University of Washington iSchool and an MBA from Portland State University. Annie Downey is the Director of Research Services at the Reed College Library in Portland, OR. She has written and presented on user studies, information literacy, K-20 library instruction, assessment, and academic library administration. She has an MLS and a PhD in Higher Education from the University of North Texas.