Co-design

The homepage for the Deakin University Library website has been running on a band-aid approach for years. A responsive template was bolted on, and a hasty migration to a Content Management System adopted in 2014, with minor patchwork since. So, some design input was long overdue, to ensure one of our digital front doors is going to meet users’ needs today and into the future. For the discovery phase of our redesign project, I led several low-fidelity co-design workshops across our four campus libraries to gather ideas and generate insights. This research method proved highly successful in learning the tasks users expect to be able to initiate from the library homepage, and their attitudes toward functionality and feature priorities. These insights enabled our team to course-correct the development of wireframes and prototypes. During the workshops at Deakin, I asked participants if they would like to test the beta homepage once it was ready. This avoided the need for further recruitment and, more importantly, levered off participants’ familiarity with the project for more efficient beta testing and richer feedback. In addition to early buy-in from library staff who attended the workshops, the co-design method included the perspectives of a broad range of library clients and stakeholders. From the early stages of the project, co-design workshops provided us with a solid foundation of diverse ideas and user insights. This enabled our team to progress smoothly and soundly through subsequent stages of the project. With our success from this simple research method, I was inspired to share the technique with peers in a workshop at the 2017 UXLibs conference.