User Services and Programming Discussion #2: Program/Service Design
29 January 2025
• What does utilizing a design process for developing library programs and services mean to you? What are the benefits?
• Think about a library you have worked with or used in the past. Briefly describe it. If you had to build a new program or service for it, what all would you need to consider? What potential challenges do you foresee?
When it comes to personal creative projects, I almost never follow a predetermined plan. From idea to planning to research to development to ??? to release, everything collides into one another as I grind away at each concern as they pop up. Reaching the organizational equivalent of "done" is whenever I'm satisfied with however things look, assuming I ever reach that point. Very nice for whimsical souls such as myself, not at all responsible when you're on a deadline paid by taxpayer dollars! So in this case, using an specific design process is something that provides both a proven (or at least should be), reliable framework to follow, and a set of measurable benchmarks for whatever stage the project is currently at, and where it should go next.
Of course, this doesn't imply that I've never had any exposure to a formal process. I haven't been involved in a project that requires such organization in my career yet, but I did get taste by participating in one for my library system during my internship, which was in the collections department. To facilitate my capstone project, I was given the opportunity to assist with the revamp of the juvenile adventure pack collection, by developing activities and finding resources for eight nature topics, which was/is the third step out of sixteen listed in official documentation. As early of a stage as that seems, my efforts went far beyond a single step: checking the source packs for their activities, looking at state standards to see what users should be getting out of the new packs, skimming through the books and toying around with the games and activities included, copying instructions and developing a pseudo curriculum for everything, scouring the library's resources and the internet suitable extras, aaaaand searching the OPAC for books to put in a companion booklist (which I suggested myself). Since I had developed a process for something that already had a clear sequence of events, it was very obvious whether a given pack was finished and designed to standard or not.
Anyway! I do quite like the ethos of something like the Design Thinking for Libraries Toolkit (2014), but I'm not sure how much of its ideas are essential for small-scale things like a one-off event at an individual branch. I'm also not sure if I'd have the leeway to think outside the box as much as work within institutionally proven policies and planning, assuming administration hasn't incorporated guidance from IDEO or another framework into their policy already.
Of all the program ideas I have that aren't just pipe dreams, something that I would like to spearhead is an informal class on comics literacy. Supposedly if kids don't get in on the medium early on in their lives they'll have trouble comprehending them as they grow, which makes total sense from a developmental perspective, yet completely bewildering to me as someone who's read comics for-literally-ever. From what I can tell, this is the case for almost every other kid growing up today, which either risks this program having a massive turnout of comic-likers or wallowing in complete obscurity due to how educated a branch's clientele already is. Either way, this would have to try to appeal to both devotees who love comics, and the target audience of kids who want to read comics but don't really get what certain motifs are supposed to mean. Though I'm actually pretty sure it'd be a mix of both no matter how devoted a given reader is—the Comics Devices Library (2024) identified and clarified the meaning and intent behind plenty of techniques I'd seen for years but never had explanation for. Still, with a theme that is probably omnipresent at every public library today, the cost and/or barriers-to-entry would be minimal, pulling mostly if not entirely from items that are already available in the library system's collection for examples.
References
IDEO. (2014). Design thinking for libraries: A toolkit for patron-centered design. https://designthinkingforlibraries.com/
Yee, R. (2024). The creator's guide to comic devices. Retrieved January 28, 2025, from: https://comicsdevices.com/