As a class, we were challenged to explore libraries and the services they provide. We were asked to gain an understanding of their role in the community, who interacts with them, the work done by the staff in these facilities, how libraries might change in the future, what space they provide and how is it used. From finding libraries to locating books inside, we have to explore and understand this area before prototyping and testing using a human-centred design approach.

teamwork

The first thing we did as a class (studio) was to grab some sticky notes and in a limited amount of time, through up some ideas about what sort of research questions we’d need to answer. After this, ideas were grouped into categories and given appropriate names. It was pointed out that not all ideas need to fit into each category. Sub-categories and ideas that float between categories are acceptable. The categories identified were:

  • Services
  • Facilities
  • Space/Environment
  • Future
  • Community
  • Users
  • Emotions/Empathy
  • Function/System
  • Stakeholders

The categories were organised in terms of themes (from the Epics, Themes, Stories structure we heard in the Service Design workshop). This was further broken down into ‘Activities to do’, ‘Activities in Progress’, and ‘Activities completed’, a la a kanban and scrum boards (from Agile development process).