Introduction


 * History and Definition of User Experience**

According to Wikipedia, the term user experience was brought to wider knowledge by Donald Norman, User Experience Architect, in the mid-1990s. Donald Norman and two other men have since designed a website called Nielsen Norman Group < http: www.nngroup.com>. Through this website the members of Nielsen Norman Group are user experience pioneers...they advocated user-centered design and usability before it became popular to do so.

At Nielsen Norman Group their definition of user experience is: "User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.

User Experience. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 30, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience User Experience. (2011). In Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved April 30, 2012 from http://www.nngroup.com/about/userexperience.html


 * What does Library User Experience mean?**

According to Bell and Hadro (2010), "User experience or UX is increasingly creeping into the lexicon of librarianship. Taking a holistic view, the library UX extends to every touch point we create where the community member connects with our human or material resources, physically or virtually." (p. 6)

Bell,S. & Hadro, J. (2010). Fish market 101: why not a reference user experience? Library Journal, Reference Supplement, 6-7.

Bell (2011) states that The most dominant use of the term “user experience” in the field of librarianship is to describe the usability of online interfaces, as demonstrated by the large number of articles on this topic published in the library literature. This usage of the term is narrower, and refers to the experience a library user has when he or she uses the library online public catalog or a database search system. Many libraries conduct usability studies to learn how to improve the user experience, but interface usability has only a limited connection to the WOW experience. A holistic WOW experience that encompasses every user touch point is much less discussed in the literature.(p. 113)

Bell,S. (2011). Delivering a wow user experience: do academic librarians measure up? ACRL 2011 Conference, A Declaration of Interdependence (pp. 112-126). Retrieved May 1, 2012 from .


 * Parameters of my Research**

This is a topic that has gained wide spread attention in the most recent years. So I will use articles from 2007-2012. All articles will be scholarly peer reviewed articles with a few articles that offer helpful tips on User Experience.