Explore Spaces Version 2 interviews + usability tests

Questions

Staff in the Libraries’ User Experience department sought to add greater functionality to our beautiful Explore Spaces website. Many universities have websites that help users explore buildings via facets such as quiet spaces, reservable rooms, and large tables. Our current Explore Spaces has some of those facets, but not as many facets as some sites. Inspired in particular by Cambridge University’s Spacefinder, we added more facets to a prototype version of Explore Spaces Version 2. 

We showed a list of facets — just a list, not a web interface — to six students, asking them:

• which of the facets they thought were useful for them.
• which ones they did not think were useful.
• for additional facets they would find useful.

Then we showed participants the prototype version of Explore Spaces Version 2 and had them do brief usability tests. For example, one test was “You want to spend 2 hours finishing a big project. You want to be alone and you want to be in a quiet place. Show us how you would use this interface to find a good place for that.”

Findings

• The interviews and usability tests validated our idea that Explore Spaces would be improved by the addition of more facets than the current interface offers.
• Pictures matter! In the usability tests, participants relied heavily on the pictures to choose spaces. 
• The alphabetical sorting we chose for lists of spaces proved useful. 
• A few facets caused confusion. When asked to find the Makerspace at the D. H. Hill Jr. Library, some participants could not guess whether it would be in the category “Data & Visualization” or the category “Digital Media Production.”
• Several participants told us that the facets “Teach or Present Work” and “Create and Showcase Work” did not mean anything to them but were not getting in their way. They understood those facets to be aimed at other users.
• Participants suggested the following facets and features the prototype lacked. We expect to add several of these before we launch Explore Spaces Version 2.  
  • A search box
  • Software — which rooms have computers with what software
  • Where users can charge devices
  • Where food is available
  • Water fountains
  • How close rooms are to elevators

Recommendations and Changes

• We added a search box to the prototype. We were already planning to add this. When participants suggested it without our prompting, it reaffirmed our plans. 
• Continue with our plan to show pictures of each library space, not generic pictures for categories of rooms that are similar, such as group study rooms. In the terms of Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design, this facilitates “Match between system and the real world.”
• Keep the alphabetical sorting of lists. 
• Add a link to information about software. It will be a larger project to enable Explore Spaces to allow users to select spaces by which software is on devices in those spaces; we will consider that later.
• Add facet(s) for food.
• Add water fountains to maps of the D. H. Hill Jr. Library and the Hunt Library. 
• Continue to think about the confusion some had about “Data & Visualization” and “Digital Media Production.” It is not clear to us now how to address this.  

As of July 2020, we do not know when we will launch Explore Spaces Version 2. The distinction between spaces for groups and spaces for individuals is such a key part of the design of our library buildings, but social distancing during the coronavirus crisis has rendered that moot.

2021 update: We launched Explore Spaces Version 2 on August 16, 2021; see https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/spaces.