Redesigning Back-office Librarian tools
Redesign the INSPIRE librarian back-office tools, improving efficiency and usability for librarians managing the platform's particle physics data.
Reduced costs by 60% by redesigning the UI and introducing automation.
The new user-friendly redesigned back office tools attracted 3 new partner institutions that signed collaboration agreements with CERN.
Activities
User research
Heuristic evaluation
Prototyping
UI Design
Usability testing
Team
Tools
Figma
Goals
Enhance Librarian Efficiency
Streamline workflows to reduce the time and effort required for common tasks like metadata editing and data curation.
Improve Data Quality
Facilitate accurate and consistent metadata creation, leading to higher quality data within INSPIRE.
Increase User Satisfaction
Create a user-friendly and intuitive interface that meets the needs of librarians and enhances their overall experience.
How Might We
Redesign the back-office librarian tools to attract more collaboration partners while simultaneously making record editing faster and easier?
INSPIRE is managed by librarians in the INSPIRE collaboration: CERN (Switzerland), DESY (Germany), Fermilab (USA), IHEP (China), IN2P3 (France) and SLAC (USA). Librarians used the back office tools daily to add and curate content, but the tools lacked efficiency and automation.
User Research
In order to understand the current landscape, I conducted the following:
Analysed existing user data (quantitative user research).
Conducted heuristic evaluation.
Interviewed users from partner laboratories in USA, China, Germany, France and Switzerland and observed walkthroughs to understand how librarians work day-to-day (qualitative user research).
User Persona
Outcome
Reduced number of clicks by 20%
CSAT score 4.2/5
Costs reduced by 60%
Old design
New design
Addressed pain points raised by the user research:
Introduced new UI that allowed users to have clear labels per field, prioritized the view of the most common fields and added pdf preview that allowed users not to go back and forth between systems.
Introduced user friendly form that both librarians and authors could use to submit their papers.
Introduced error panel that guides users to potential solutions.
Lessons learnt
While redesigning a back-office product, I learnt to:
Address change aversion
Don’t just visually modernize the interface
Introducing a completely new interface for INSPIRE’s librarian tools initially met with some resistance. To address this, I co-designed with librarians: they participated in workshops, provided feedback on prototypes and tested iterations throughout the design process. This collaborative approach fostered a sense of ownership and helped identify potential concerns early on. Furthermore, I actively cultivated relationships with influential librarians who became advocates for the new system within their community, easing the transition and encouraging wider acceptance. We also implemented a phased rollout, allowing librarians to gradually transition to the new system while providing ongoing support.
Deeply understanding the librarians' mental models, workflows and pain points was crucial. Simply replicating existing functionality in a new design wouldn't suffice.