Robin Davis

Name Pronunciation

rah-bin day-vis

Pronouns

She / Her

Associate Head, User Experience

Department:

User Experience

Phone: (919) 515-3708

Email: rcdavis6@ncsu.edu

Languages:

  • French (Intermediate Reading, Writing, & Speaking)
  • Spanish (Beginner Reading, Writing, & Speaking)
Orcid Logo0000-0002-0548-0803

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My areas of expertise

Selected Works

Recent Works

View more works on Citation Index

Shout-outs From My Colleagues

I brought an idea to the User Research Team: let’s learn more about the Faculty Research Commons users and their needs. Out of this idea came a great collaboration with Margaret, Robin, Meredith, and Cindy. We worked together for months to gather a variety of data, allowing us to dig into why, how, and how often faculty use these spaces at Hunt and Hill Libraries. From our study we were able to make more apparent the value and use of these spaces and give voice to the users’ recommendations for improvement. Each person contributed their valuable perspectives, time, skills, and technical know-how. It was a wonderful collaboration and I want to thank each partner for being part of our FRC study power team! Our collaboration is a great example of what makes it special to work at the Libraries. Thank you!

— Kim Duckett

Robin did such an amazing job getting the Accessibility Committee off the ground. It can be so hard to chair a new committee and Robin made it look easy. We not only got off to a very productive start with a lot of great projects and events to address the accessibility needs of the libraries and NC State communities, but we also have created our own community of accessibility champions within the libraries. I am always learning new things from Robin and I feel lucky to work with someone who has so many great skills and is so generous in sharing them.

— Beth Ashmore

A recently published article describes the incredibly thoughtful and practical approaches that this multi-departmental, 4-person team took to create user-centered library email notifications. A quote I love from the article: "As we evaluated and rewrote our email templates, we considered how a stressed user or a user in crisis would react to the email. We repeatedly asked ourselves questions beginning with “What about a user who…” or “What if the user…?” We aimed to find a way to add the least amount of stress to our users’ already stressful lives, while still suggesting that they take action in response to some of these email templates." Check it out: Davis, R. C. & Partlow, M. & Pearce, D. & Sheffield, S., (2022) “Snippets, subject lines, and exclamation points: A case study in constructing better library emails”, Weave: Journal of Library User Experience 5(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/weaveux.1634

— Hilary Davis

I'm grateful to the complex and conscientious work of the Collaborative and Remote Work Task Force (CRWTF). They created outstanding guidance that is so well-organized and accessible! I revisit the Confluence pages on a regular basis, and consider them one of the most important foundations for our work. The guidance, tips, and examples for conducting hybrid meetings, setting up and implementing the onboarding process, and the advice for team building are incredibly helpful for all of us, most especially middle managers and project managers. The meeting free days and TL;DR summaries in each section of the guidance documentation represent the intentionality and care put into this work by this amazing team. Thank you to Hillary Fox, Kevin Beswick, Robin Davis, Mia Partlow, Lynn Whittenberger, and Jennifer Garrett for supporting our work through the Collaborative and Remote Work Task Force (CRWTF).

— Hilary Davis

Simply put, Web Team solves problems, and fast. An increasing number of Libraries departments are producing different kinds of content across different platforms. Web Team has been adept at not only enabling departments to produce new kinds of content, but also helping External Relations leverage and re-use that content. The team has been incredibly responsive to (and patient with!) out-of-left-field, what-if questions by thinking through the implications of back-end changes from both a technology perspective and a consistency one. They respond quickly with solutions and implementations informed by the Libraries' overall mission, rather than playing defense against changes to the complex infrastructure that they have to maintain. Web Team is always helpful, thoughtful, reasonable, and fast.

— Chris Vitiello

Robin and Katharine exceeded all of my expectations during recent usability testing with input from FOL Board members. They were both thoughtful, patient, astute in their considerations, and incredibly helpful in summarizing ways to improve the FOL and giving webpages. Our participants seemed delighted to be able to contribute and part of their enthusiasm stemmed from the easy conversations with this diplomatic duo. While Robin and Katharine naturally put the test group at ease, they also ensured we were well prepared for discussions and follow up. Thanks to them both for their extraordinary efforts!

— Tina Morrison