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Cambridge University Library
Creative Direction. Service Design.


The project aimed to address the fragmented user experience across physical and digital services at Cambridge University Libraries. We conducted diary studies, interviews, participatory shadowing to better understand how students, librarians and professors were accessing the space and resources of the libraries. My role focused on Creative Direction and Design, leveraging both my service design and architectural background. Designed in partnership with Paul Jervis Heath and Chloe Heath.

Outcome

  • We identified and addressed the critical gap between physical and digital library services, creating a more cohesive and intuitive experience for students and academics across all 108 Cambridge libraries.

  • We developed concepts like the "Study Magnet" and crowdsourced reading lists, supporting how students and researchers access and interact with the vast resources available in the Cambridge library system. This gave a new set of tools to academics and students, so that they could reach relevant resources faster, and utilise the space available at the libraries accordingly to their needs.

  • Our work laid the foundation for the FutureLib initiative, setting a new standard for academic library services that better support the Cambridge scholarly community.


Connecting 108 Libraries at Cambridge University

The University asked to redesign their services for the 108 libraries located around Cambridge. The task seemed challenging enough, especially because the libraries had different user types, functions and locations. We started with in field research, where Modern Human interviewed students and academics to understand how they used the libraries and their services. Diary studies, walk in interviews and in dept interviews were set up to discover more about 162 students. Participatory shadowing, Human Centred Design Process and contextual interviews were used to research more about academics and their needs.

The main finding of the research led to understand that researchers, academics and students felt a strong lack of integration between the physical and digital services, which led to confused and fragmented experiences.

Together with the University of Cambridge, we started to outline the future of the Library services with a focus on integration between physical and digital services, with the objective to source the infinite resources that the libraries have, and to foster the lively Cambridge scholarly community. 

Service structure

 

Study Magnet, crowdsourced reading lists