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Reimagined NYPL Experience

Over time, budget cuts have put the New York Public Library in a position of constantly having to articulate its value amidst a changing milieu of digital media and free access to information on the internet. This design research project aimed at identifying strengths and weakness of the current library ecosystem and earmarked opportunities for improvement, as imagined through a video user journey.

Employing a variety of methods from ethnographic interviews at library branches to remote online interviews with library website users, the team analyzed its findings and presented them to a group of NYPL stakeholders. The biggest design opportunity drawn out of user research was addressing unmet needs within the library’s physical branches. The team reimagined the user journey, teasing out recommendations that ranged from low-hanging fruit to pie-in-the-sky dreams. Here they are presented as a video prototype.