It’s just different: Pivoting from in-person to virtual user testing

Hesburgh Libraries and the Snite Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame are in the final stages of a three-year Mellon grant to bring together library, archive, and museum content in a unified display and exhibition platform. The grant team has taken a user-centered approach, incorporating regular user testing cycles into software and program development. In this presentation, Abby Shelton, formerly the Outreach Specialist at the Snite Museum of Art, and Mikala Narlock, Digital Collections Strategy Librarian at Hesburgh Libraries, will discuss the variety of virtual testing methods they used to evaluate the user experience for the collaborative digital collections site. Attendees will learn about the ways we interacted with users before COVID-19, how they pivoted to virtual testing, and the lessons we learned along the way. Presented to the Academic Libraries of Indiana (ALI) Assessment Committee on July 19, 2021. A recording of the presentation is freely available on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/CWMWE8OA-Ik