User Needs Assesment

MIT Libraries User Needs Assessment

Photo/Diary Study
Information for volunteers

We are interested in finding out how you seek and use information related to your academic and research life. During a 7-day period we'd like you to take photos and brief notes whenever you engage in information-seeking activities related to your academic studies at MIT.

Examples of photos might include:

1. talking to a colleague or professor
2. a computer screen
3. browsing the stacks
4. using your PDA or cellphone

These photos will be used to jog your memory during an interview where we will ask you to tell the story of what you did during the week. (We will provide a place for you to upload your digital photos in advance of the interview).

Below are some ideas for things to record:
- searching the web
- using library resources (at MIT or elsewhere)
- asking for advice from others
- reading
- browsing in the library or a bookstore or online
- listening to the radio, podcasts, or other audio content
- viewing television or other video content
- lab work
- conversations and collaboration with others
- writing, compiling data, organizing information

Feel free to interpret “information-seeking” broadly and take any type of photos you like that will jog your memory and help tell us the story of what you did. We are interested in seeing examples of things that work well, things that don’t work, successes, failures, work-arounds, hacks -- any real-life experience that you have regarding finding information.

We are interested in your academic and research life and not information-seeking for your personal life.

Some things we would like to find out:

- Where are you when you look for information?
         (dorm room, library, cafe, student center)
- What are you doing?
- In what order do you go about a task?
- What strategies do you use?
- Why are you searching or using the information?
- What resources are you using?
         (web, books, journals, friends, library databases, e-journals, newspapers, maps, data sets)
- What are you searching for?
- When are you doing these things?
         (day of week, time of day, time of year)
- What devices do you use?
         (computer, iPod, PDA, cell phone, other)

 

We'll be asking your permission to use your comments and photos (without personal identifying info) in future publications and presentations. (see consent form)

 

What we hope to learn:
- How do students find and use information related to their academic work at MIT?
- What are their tasks?
- What are the various learning and information-seeking modes used by students?
- How do they break into categories? Does it vary by discipline?
- What is the larger context for how people seek information and how do various tasks interrelate?
- Where are the gaps that could be filled by our services and tools? Which real-world problems can we help solve?

The answers to these questions will help inform our planning for the MIT Libraries services.

This is part A of a 3-part study to be conducted in early 2006. Subsequent studies will include “group task analysis” and more in-depth interviews where we ask future volunteers for feedback on prototypes of possible future tools and services.

 

Web site created on February 6, 2006 - Nicole Hennig