Events + Tiny Café

We conducted brief interviews and a card-sorting activity to find out how users conceptualize our events, workshops, and exhibits. We found that users liked browsing by topic.

Event cards on a table, sorted into the categories Humanities, Fun, and Math and Science

Overview

Question

Do users understand the difference between events, workshops, and exhibits on our website? How can we improve browsing for events?

Findings

Some participants made a similar differentiation between events, workshops, and exhibits, but in the card-sorting activity, participants tended to categorize by topic or discipline (e.g., technology or arts) rather than type.

Participants liked a mock-up of topic tags for Events, and they pointed to the existing list of Event Series titles as another way they would browse.

Some mistook a newsletter signup box as a search box and said it would be useful; others saw there was no events-only search box and said they would expect one to be there. A few participants also said that location was an important factor in deciding whether to attend an event.

Recommendations

We should deploy Event tags including "Science & Technology" and "Arts & Media."
We should change the way the newsletter sign-up box looked. (This was done shortly after the Tiny Café.)
We should prototype an Events-only search bar.
We should prototype a dropdown menu of locations.

How We Did It

We used the Tiny Café model for this user research. We set up a table with coffee and pastries from Panera in the lobby of the Park Shops building. We chose to conduct this Tiny Café outside of the Libraries buildings in order to get a sample of participants who may or may not use Libraries services.

Survey

While participants waited in a short line, we presented them with an iPad that had a "while-you-wait" survey loaded. It asked, "Before today, did you know that in the NC State University Libraries, you can..." with options including "Learn how to use a 3D printer" and "Attend talks by alumni." While not directly relevant to our research question, this information was helpful for contextualizing how much participants knew about Libraries events.

Card sorting

Events sorted into Fun, Arts, Movies/Games, and Research/Tools — Card-sorting outcomes

Events divided into categories: Activities at the Library, Intersection of Art and Technology, Speaker Series, and Educational Opportunities

Then, the participant approached the table to do a card-sorting activity. We gave them a stack of 12 Libraries events, exhibits, or workshops, but they had only a small picture, title, date & time, and location. The cards weren't identified as an event, exhibit, or workshop. We asked the participant to group them into categories that made sense to them, and then label the category on the neon-colored index card.

For example, here are the categories that participants assigned to a workshop called "Orientation: Digital media making in the Libraries":

Art (digital)
Art/design
Computer science
D. H. Hill Jr. [location]
Digital stuff
Education
Hobbies
How to's
Intersection of art and technology
Learning and development
Library teaching

Math/science
One-time
Research
Research/tools
Tech-based tutorials
Technology
Technology and talks
Tips/help
Tutorials/workshops
Workshop/educational

Reactions to a prototype

Once they were finished with card sorting, we presented them with a printout of the current Events page, and asked them a few final questions, including "What's missing from this page?