FRILUX-ing

the new verb at the University of Oslo Library

Abstract

New practices and innovation are changing the culture at the University of Oslo Library. This has resulted in consistently using user experience/UX methods to put the user needs at the very center when new services are developed.

The paper will outline why there is a need of a UX strategy at a leadership level in service and user centric organizations, like academic libraries, and show the value of UX as a competitive advantage. Our case  study is from a Norwegian University Library, which has evolved over a period of six year to now be at the forefront in Scandinavia when it comes to using UX into the academic library. Thanks to the support of he Norwegian National Library and the continued efforts of many “UX-librarians” at our library, we are now using design tools in different contexts to create user-friendly services. UX has evolved over time and  staff now uses it as an active part of different practices in the organization. In addition, the leadership has included the use of UX-methods in projects in their strategic plan for the library to ensure that the user perspective is taken in account in the services delivered by the library. In this paper we will also explain  why we do not have a UX group, and why we instead use a hub approach to gather different, but relevant,  staff for each project. Findings, like relevant activity in the organization or new services, will be presented. Furthermore, the paper will give a long term perspective on the use of UX, emphasizing the need  for constant evolvement (Gasparini & Culén, 2017), user research and ethnography (Gasparini, 2015a) in  order to enhance the user experience of the library (Gasparini, 2015b). Finally we wish to introduce Frilux (www.frilux.no). Frilux is a platform for sharing UX experience. We will outline how we have arrived at this new platform, why we wish to share it with other libraries, and why Frilux is a useful tool for libraries who want to: 

• Apply UX and Design Thinking (Brown, 2008)for library development
• Use UX methods when working together in the organization across subjects and system
• Share their experiences with others
• Meet like-minded

References
Brown, T. (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, 86(6), 84–92.
Gasparini, A. (2015a). A Holistic Approach to User Experience in the Context of an Academic Library Interactive System. In A. Marcus (Ed.), Design, User Experience, and Usability: Interactive Experience Design (pp. 173–184). Springer International Publishing. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20889-3_17

Gasparini, A. (2015b). Perspective and Use of Empathy in Design Thinking (pp. 49–54). Presented at the ACHI 2015, The Eighth International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions. Retrieved from http://www.thinkmind.org/index.php?view=article&articleid=achi_2015_3_10_20121

Gasparini, A., & Culén, A. (2017). Temporality and Innovation in Digital Humanities: The Case of Papyri from Tebtunis. Interaction Design & Architectures(s) IxD&A, (34), 161–184