TL;DR: Library staff found the event calendar platform to have a poor user experience. Evaluative research indicated that staff were generally satisfied with Springshare products and used it heavily in their daily work but experience pain points. Follow-ups remedied most issues experienced with the platform.
Project Context
I started to receive staff complaints about the Springshare’s LibApp suite (a platform used by thousands of academic libraries) regarding usability and back end experience and management began to question whether we needed to look at a replacement platform.
Before diving into benchmarking for a replacement product, I sent out a five-question survey to stakeholders to gain a better understanding of how staff use the product and user requirements.
The goals
• Understand how Springshare apps are being used within the library
• Determine user satisfaction
• Identify particular product requirements should a replacement software be necessary
By surveying staff, I was able to gain insight on the level of satisfaction, requirements, and identify opportunities to improve things within our existing Springshare setup.
The findings focus on how often Springshare products are used, features that are used most often, satisfaction, and feedback.
The Results
To gain the most valuable data from this research, I looked at internal staff support tickets and Springshare accounts to identify target users. I learned that most respondents use Springshare products daily.
I found that Springshare's LibCal product features specifically, including the event calendar, consultation scheduling, and spaces and equipment modules were most critical for library stakeholders.
One of the most important pieces of information that I was able to glean from this research was that although there were complaints about the platform, most staff respondents indicated that they were generally satisfied with Springshare.
Outcomes
Based on the survey results, I was able to determine that the library was not in need of a replacement for Springshare’s suite of applications at this time. Instead, I was able to gain insight on specific areas of the product that were causing a poor user experience for certain staff members and provide solutions to those problems.