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Comps

I have been AWOL for a while because I’ve gotten busy–my end-of-degree comprehensive exam is going to be on Friday. I’ve been stuffing my head full of information science theories, people, and models. Everything will be fine, I know, but it’s still stressful.

After the exam is over on Friday, though…I can’t wait! I have some books to read, friends to hang out with, and movies to watch. I still have a few weeks left in my databases class, but they won’t be too bad. I just have to learn some baby SQL and I’ll be good to go.

I can’t believe that I’m so close to finishing. I feel like I’ve been plugging away at this degree forever. Even though Forbes says that a masters in library and information science is the very worst masters degree you can get, I still feel pretty confident in my choice. The lack of job growth across the board is worrying, of course, but I know that the skills you learn in library school can be applied in many different kinds of work outside the traditional library–for example, in usability, information architecture, or records management. I’m sure I can find something I’ll be happy doing.

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Presenting

Two days ago, I delivered a presentation about my practicum experience to a group of colleagues at my library. Although not many of them were familiar with DiscoverLibrary, they were all very supportive and were an excellent audience. The more I present this material, the less nervous I get. It helps that I am familiar with the material and with basic questions about usability, the testing process, and the guide I created–it gave me a sense of confidence to be able to answer the questions that I got at the end of my presentation without straining to think of an answer.

I would recommend doing a practicum to any MLS/MSIS student. Although I’ve gotten a lot of out my classwork at UTK, I learned a ton about project management, becoming a subject expert (or at least not a total noob), interviewing and testing users, and presentation skills. I didn’t realize when I started that even though I might put in a ton of effort on a project, it wouldn’t matter unless I could communicate my findings to the people who could implement changes. That’s a good thing to learn, and I’m glad I got to figure it out during a practicum instead of on the job.

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The presentation

The presentation went well, and I am so happy that 1) everybody was so supportive and 2) I don’t have to worry about it anymore. There were more than twenty librarians who attended, although I was too nervous to make a full headcount. They were pulling in chairs so that everyone fit in the room! Although I was nervous initially, it helped to remember that I was as much of a subject expert on usability as anyone there could possibly be, and that everyone wanted me to do well. The questions that people asked at the end of the presentation were all  interesting, thought-provoking, and non-hostile. Since DisoverLibrary is a bit of a touchy subject at Vanderbilt, I was worried that someone might take the opportunity to vent their spleen about the site’s looks or functionality (mostly based on what it was like when it rolled out, unfortunately). However, everyone was enthusiastic about my findings.

I’m going to upload my presentation so that anyone who is interested can take a look at it. Though my usability study examined the user interface of DiscoverLibrary and not the search functionality, I think that the information I discovered could work in tandem with any future studies the libraries might conduct on the search functionality. Somebody whose name I cannot recall also wants to set up an archive of usability tests the library has done–I hope she gets back to me, because that sounds like a cool project.

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Cleaning up

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on my presentation, a paper detailing my practicum experience, and the usability guide. Sometimes I feel like I spend more time deleting things than I do writing them, but I suppose that a lot of writing involves rewriting.  Like most people, I’m not a naturally gifted public speaker, and I’m looking forward to the presentation with my colleagues with a mixture of anticipation, excitement, and dread. Tomorrow I will run through my presentation with my awesome practicum supervisor, and I hope to generate a lot of useful criticism before the big presentation on Tuesday.

I think I did a decent job creating and executing the usability test back in February, especially as it was the first time I had ever done one. In retrospect, had I realized that the students I would test would be mostly science and engineering students, I may have tailored the questions to be more like ones they would be likely to have in real life. Instead, two of the scenarios involved finding information about a popular best-seller and a classic work of literature. Though the skills needed to find that information are the same whether science or literature is emphasized, it might have helped the students connect more with the test.

I’m a bundle of nerves at the moment. Although in a sense it does not technically matter how the presentation goes, I really want to do a good job. I think that some of the things I’ve discovered while sifting through the results of the test could have a real impact on the redesign of DiscoverLibrary, and could help the people who are using the site on a daily basis. I hope that when I present my findings, the audience is receptive and in a position to incorporate some of the changes I propose. I don’t want to imply at all that DiscoverLibrary is a bad product, because it isn’t, but some small things could make it more pleasant to use–clearer buttons, consistent terminology throughout the site, and an ability to incorporate advanced search options with a minimum of trouble, for example. I hope that my audience feels the same way.

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The home stretch

I’m moving into the last phase of this project, and things are getting exciting. I have two big things to work on at the moment: I need to add a lot of information to the research guide on usability, and I need to create the presentation I will be giving on May 8th. The presentation will cover the methodology of the usability test I conducted in February, as well as the information generated by the test and possible applications that information as the site is refreshed in mid-May. Public speaking makes me really nervous (and I am not very good at it), but I think that I can handle 20-25 minutes on this topic. Conducting the test was so interesting that I’m sure there will be a lot to cover.

I also finished the Udacity 101 course on creating a search engine in Python. I hadn’t had much experience with programming before, and I really enjoyed it. Parts of the class were frustrating and confusing, but I worked hard at it and I think I have learned a great deal.

Part of what made the course so enjoyable to me was that programming encouraged me to approach problem-solving in a different way than I usually do. I liked breaking a question down into its tiniest components, and using logic to figure out how to structure and approach the solution. It wasn’t necessarily intuitive, but I think it would become easier to slip into that mode of thinking with practice. I found myself puzzling over homework questions as I walked around the grocery store or tried to read a book. I’ve always liked logic puzzles, and I felt like programming was tapping into the same part of my brain. I might take the web applications course when it gets started later this month, if I have the time.

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Ugh, bad eyes

I’m trying to get stuff accomplished on this project, but it is hard to concentrate. I think that is partly because I am having some problems with my vision, and I keep getting a headache. I am very nearsighted, and as a result my retinas are much thinner than a normal person’s. That means that sometimes weird things happen–for example, for the past two or three years I have had subretinal neovascularizations, which is where a blood vessel attempts to grow through my retina. This causes flashes and means that I need to get an injection of a drug called Lucentis into my eye. So far it is an inconvenience, but definitely not the worst thing in the world to deal with.

A few weeks ago, however, I started seeing a much bigger flash, and after some time at the retinologist’s office I found out that I have a mysterious, thin scar on my left retina. It means that there is a long, thin blurry patch in my visual field (although thankfully not in the center of my vision), and that I see the scar as a bright spot whenever I blink, close my eye, or look at a bright light source like a computer monitor. I’m sure that I will get used to it in a few weeks, though, and then I will be able to see as well as I could before it happened.

I’m also trying to put together a prototype of the possible changes for DiscoverLibrary. I wish I was a more efficient user of Photoshop, because my designs look fine but they take hours to produce. I’m sure that it will be worth it when the prototype is done, though. Ideally, users will be able to click around in it as though it were a dummy version of the real DiscoverLibrary site.

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Udacity

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on the CS 101 course through Udacity. Like Khan Academy, Udacity seeks to provide education for free to anyone who wants to learn.  I’m excited to see where this new educational model goes, and what kind of students will take advantage of it. Although Udacity assumes that you have access to a computer and the internet as well as time to work through the courses, this can provide an amazing educational opportunity for nontraditional students. I looked through the forums yesterday, and it was wonderful to see the students who are taking the course–there are a lot of older, younger, and international students all learning together.

This particular course focuses on learning Python to build a tiny functional search engine in seven weeks. We are nearly halfway through, and I’m enjoying the course tremendously. I haven’t really done any programming since a C++ course I took in college more than a decade ago, but Python is not as hard as I thought it would be.

 

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Finding trends

Looking at the responses I got for the test has been really interesting. Take a look at the current DiscoverLibrary site here.

Some of the test subjects said that the first thing they would do would be to click on the big “sign in” call to action in the middle of the page, but not one of them had any idea that they already had an account. Many of the comments said that they would not read the wall of text on the main page. Nobody saw the “Databases by Subject” link, because it does not look like something you would be able to click on.

I am going to work up a prototype this weekend with Photoshop and InVision that will incorporate some of these changes so that the librarians who work on the DiscoverLibrary site can visualize what some of these changes might look like. It would be rewarding for me to be able to make a lasting difference with my practicum so that its users would find the site easier to navigate and use.

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Transcription

Yesterday evening I went over to the library to work on transcribing some of the interviews. There must be a better way to do this out there, because it was extremely time-consuming. I have only gotten three of the seven interviews transcribed, and it has been nearly a week since I conducted the tests! The difficulty is that it’s important to have what people say in response to each question as well as a meticulous record of their actions when trying to carry out the scenario (finding an article on the site, for example). However, I’m confident that when everything is transcribed it will be relatively simple to pull good information out of the spreadsheet to see where people had problems on the site, as well as the things that work.

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Scut work

This afternoon I’m doing data entry. I’m trying to copy down the answers to the questions that I asked my study participants as accurately as possible. It’s definitely not as glamorous as conducting the usability test, but I’m sure it’s going to pay off in the end.

I’m surprised at how many common themes I’m seeing. Some people say that the site looks dated, but many of them say that it looks user-friendly (even if they had trouble navigating the site). Almost everyone says that they just ignore the wall of text in the middle of the page. None of the participants knew that they had an account on the site. There are so many tiny things that can be easily improved, though, that it gives me hope that it was worthwhile conducting the study.