NYPL Membership Redesign

Service Design
UX Research

Time:
6 Weeks

My Role:
Service Designer
UX Researcher

Methods:
Site Visit
Survey
Stakeholder Interviews
Competitive Analysis
Ideation
Prototyping
Usability Testing

How do you build new awareness and value for a resource that has been in New York for 128 years?

Since its founding in 1895, The New York Public Library has been a source of inspiration for all. With 92 locations across the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, NYPL is an essential resource for communities across New York City and for users from around the world. Libraries have an incredible amount of resources (including our research). How can membership be revitalized for changing lifestyles in the modern digital age? Recently budget cuts to Libraries across New York have shaken the communities that depend on these resources. We all grow up thinking of these essential resources as evergreen, but there are threats to their longevity. Governmental agencies can claim to relocate their already tight funding without consistent use. Raising awareness of the range of resources, benefits to the community, and how easy it is to access is the core of this service design project. I worked in an agile sprint process over six weeks.

The Brief

“Reimagine how people apply for and use the NYPL card, with the goal of increasing access to the library's resources and services.”

Site Visit
Minimal presentation of membership benefits onsite.

  • Most of the signage provided onsite was aimed towards tourists, visitors to the library and didn’t highlight any benefits to people visiting to access the space and resources.

01

Understanding both sides of the library service

User Research

  • There is no personalization, member preferences or information about library benefits during the signup process. There is an assumption that the public already know where to find this information.

Signup Walkthrough
Becoming a member was easy but finding out in person was not.

Staff Interviews
Membership can only be done by certain staff and adds to public confusion.

  • Staff acknowledged the fact that there is no proper signage regarding getting the library card and from where to get it once you are inside the building.

Member Survey
The future of library services will be both digital resources and access.

  • 89% of the survey respondents had used the card to borrow physical books from NYPL

    Whereas, only 30% of the NYPL card holders have used the card to access exhibitions or listen to podcasts.

Our Stakeholders

Revitalizing the accessibility of membership and its holistic benefits.

02

Defining the goals of the project

We researched how membership systems are designed for both rational and emotional values to better understand where library membership currently sits. The only rational benefit that was missing from the service was convenience.

Source: Alice Kogan & Simon Heather, IDEO, https://www.ideo.com/journal/6-ways-to-design-value-into-your-membership-model

Personalization

Understanding what resources are available to members locally that they are interested in. This also ties into building a community through attending events that resonate with the members who frequent the areas around physical library spaces.

Physical Spaces

Our final goal relates to connecting with and raising awareness of physical library spaces.

Service Design Goals

Awareness

Highlighting the convenience, benefits and ease of membership to a wider audience of people living in New York. This resource awareness includes the Culture Pass which entitles members of the public to receive free access to 80+ cultural institutions across NYC.

Digital wallets offer a detailed personal account overview.

We found there were more opportunities for showing updates, history, benefits and member information through wallet applications that the public use mostly for contactless payments and scanning their details.

Between the first quarter of 2021 and third quarter of 2022 (the most recent quarter for which data is available), the percentage of Americans that said that they used a mobile wallet at some point in the previous three months increased from 38% to 48%. Although physical cards are still popular, this highlights the uptake in digital wallet adoption and opportunities for the public to familiarize themselves with the technology.

Competitive Analysis

Example of Wallet ID

Infographic Visualization

03

Bringing modern membership to a 128 year old organization and utilizing existing digital applications.

Early Exploration

I explored physical touch-points and alternative membership signup but as we worked through the iterative process we found meeting people where they are digitally as our final sprint route. I worked on sketching the possible routes during team discussions. It really helped us to roughly visualize routes through imagemaking.

Prototyping our ideas

Initial ideas with notifications

Ideation around physical touchpoints

Early membership signup redesign

NYPL asks the public to provide only their name, address, proof of ID and contact information to become a library member. How do we use this information to improve member experience while utilizing existing NYPL resources?

How could we highlight specific interests to a member who provides minimal personal information to NYPL?

ADDING CARD TO YOUR WALLET

Physical card still in tact, member can scan their physical card’s barcode that uploads to the NYPL application

CONTINUED PRIVACY

The only information taken from the application is the member’s Zipcode and this automatically locates their local library. The member can opt in or out of notifications relating to the libraries that are automatically added by this information.

RESOURCE NOTIFICATIONS

Whenever a member is in a radius of their local library they can get updates on events, status of their requests or general popular resources.

Highlighting a member’s local resources


We incorporated GPS technology to create a virtual geographic boundary to trigger a response when a mobile device enters or leaves a particular area. This heightens member’s awareness of their local branches activities without asking for more personal details or information.

How does this service work within the member’s holistic experience?

We iterated our service blueprint during each sprint to think through the types of resources and technology utilized throughout the membership experience. This blueprint works through the actions of both the customer, role of staff and necessary technology to complete the service through pre-visit, during visit and post visit stages. We realized from our stakeholder interviews and surveys that incorporating existing behaviors and resources was key when proposing a solution.

Service Blueprint

Meet Mia trying to find a space to study with the help of NYPL!

  • What opportunities does a digital membership, notifications and geofencing afford during a traditional visit to the library?

04

How could this service be evaluated and beneficial?

Defining success and impact

Resource Uptake

Through member notifications, library resource usage and physical footfall through the libraries we could evaluate if the digital wallet service was proving effective for improving the membership experience.

Member & Staff Opinion

I would survey members and staff to see if the membership introductions were benefitting both of their respective experiences. A form of System Usability Score for the design could be developed and iterations made.

Funding Allocations

The data collected from member’s engagement with notifications, resources and physical library spaces could ease the emotional labor that NYPL staff feel to fight for funding from governmental agencies. The needs of the community through digital engagement results could provide a clearer view of how the space works for those who visit.

  1. Public services are incredibly complicated with the range of stakeholders and points of view to take into account.

  2. I found the sprint process super helpful to work through ideas and research together rapidly!

  3. I would love to walk through the use of this project in a library space to complete a further round of prototyping and testing.

Reflections

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