Reimagine the library experience at ArtCenter

THE ASK

How might we enhance the library experience at ArtCenter catering to both users' and librarians' needs by incorporating technology and rethinking a space to utilize the library to the maximum potential?

Tool for Librarians to Manage the Library

Kiosk to Help Users

Mobile App Works with Kiosk Synchronusly

FIRST THING FIRST

We started with making problem statements for both: service receivers(staff and students) and service providers(librarians) to define what the core problems are and how we could suggest solutions based on them

Resources Just for You

Dot provides customized information for users by having a log-in stage where users have to scan or type in their student ID numbers. Not only does it give necessary information such as required books for classes, but it also gives users recommendations on additional resources that they could utilize.

Reserve a Room with Ease

Reserve a room for study or collaboration with teams on a DOT screen easily. It shows the status of all rooms including availability, equipment in the room, remaining time if occupied, and so on, at a glance so that users can reserve accordingly without confusion.

Check Out Books

Through the DOT app, users can self-checkout books easily. Also, it navigates users to the location of the book they are looking for. Follow the arrows, grab a book, scan the barcode, and then you're good to go!

Access Collaboration Rooms

When users reserve a room and it's closer to being ready, users get a notification on the app and they can access the room with a digital key provided via the app. Moreover, they can send requests during the time in the room and also self-checkout when the time's up.

Assist Fast & Easy

Assisting users is one of the main jobs for librarians and they can see the assistance requests at a glance on the main page. When they click the requests, they can see the brief info of users and assist them through the options that the users selected: chat or in-person.

Ultimate Tool for Librarians

From controlling the lights to changing temperatures in the library, librarians can easily manage the set-ups with one click. Moreover, they can send out announcements to users and chat with them by just opening up the options tool on the left side.

PROJECT CANVAS

In the beginning of the process, we made a project canvas to set the details for our project, and this became a place where we came back to when things are confusing or unclear

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

We looked through modern libraries and discovered that they are adding new technology to make a better experience for librarians and users. Moreover, they are also creating more personal spaces and rooms for users which is one of the needs of our users as well. 

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

We looked through modern libraries and discovered that they are adding new technology to make a better experience for librarians and users. Moreover, they are also creating more personal spaces and rooms for users which is one of the needs of our users as well. 

-How often do you visit the library?

-What is the most important library service?

USER RESEARCH METHODS

After conducting interviews, we listed all the early assumptions and factoids from interviews to see if they could be paired and make goals from them. Gathering these together, they became skeleton personas. Then, we made behavioral continuums with interview insights to find patterns.

Ultimately, the patterns we found from behavioral continuums became personas. Through personas, we defined users' pain points and needs, which were the reasoning behind our design solutions.

NEXT STEPS

The library is a living organism as it is always changing and things are always moving around. Thus, integrating the RFID technology into the library system can better help with the navigation of the library app. Also, this can help with the check-out system since students could walk out of the library with the book they want to check out with RFID tags. This technology already has been used by lots of big libraries to track books and minimize the errors and steps of the process.