by Jan Sykes, President, Information Management Services (Illinois Chapter, Knowledge Management and Leadership & Management Divisions)

We’ve seen earlier Future Ready posts recommending that information and knowledge professionals apply principles of design to our work. This idea was reinforced this week in a keynote presentation at the ILA (Illinois Library Association) conference by Duane Bray of the design firm IDEO. He noted that they often found that people in the trenches have some of the best insights into user behaviors, emerging trends and new ways of working. Are we, as information professionals, actively observing and engaging our colleagues in conversations that help us identify emerging practices and opportunities? Or, do we use our extremely busy schedules and full work load as justification to continue our “business as usual” mode? In order to develop new and creative, user-centered ways of making business information readily available to our clients, our antennae must be sensitive to changing signals in our environment.

Mr. Bray described several emerging behaviors they have identified in recent work in the education and healthcare sectors including: human multitasking, mediated conversations (engagement and reliance on input from our social network), melding of online and offline worlds, and leveraging of collective intelligence (ratings and commentary offered by others across a range of products and services, e.g., YELP reviews). Most of us would probably acknowledge seeing these same behaviors. The challenge is to transition our mindset and our service models to incorporate this reality. It is critical for us to do so to remain relevant and competitive. While we may feel we are caught up in whirlwinds of change, I like the concept of small-scale, rapid prototyping to test new services or products within our control and within our respective communities. In collaboration with diverse small groups of clients and colleagues, new tools, technologies, and resources can be quickly tested. Failure on a small scale is an inexpensive learning experience and helps us refocus our planning and energy in a direction that is likely to have a more positive outcome. Successful prototyping lays the groundwork (and business case) for an expanded implementation. More importantly, such work helps us move with added confidence into the future.

Jan Sykes has over 20 years experience in the information industry. Currently, she leads Information Management Services, Inc., an independent consultancy.  Her work is focused on information and knowledge management projects, including needs assessments, content portfolio reviews, contract negotiations and strategic planning activities. Prior to beginning her own consulting firm, Jan was Senior Director of Client Services Consulting for Knight-Ridder Information, Inc.

Jan is active in SLA: she was president of the IL chapter in 2002 and chaired the Association Nominating Committee in 2005. She served on the Board of KM-Chicago and also on the Board of Trustees for the public library in her community.

by Reece Dano, Oregon Chapter, Advertising& Marketing Division

Much has been made about design-thinking and its supposed ability to summon up innovation and transform organizations. True, its flashier proponents have led many to question the scope of its utility. However, working as an information specialist within a design consultancy, I’ve seen how carefully designed systems, products and communication methods can change lives. So what is it all about?

In brief, design-thinking is any process that allows you to change your point of view. These processes often use abductive thinking to promote creativity and temporarily subdue logical constraints. Participants in design-thinking activities are asked to make logical leaps in service of idea generation. The more ideas generated in this manner, the more your default (and possibly stale) thinking patterns are shaken and called into question.

The change of perspective design-thinking grants can lead to the acceptance of information that opens you to greater flexibility. For information professionals, this flexibility can inspire more relevant user-oriented services, career agility and the chance to envision even greater opportunities.

Design-thinking isn’t that hard. Changing your point of view is.

If you’re interested in opening your current services to a creative examination, here are some questions you can ask yourself to kick off a design-thinking session. Some of these questions are challenging. Others may seem a bit silly. However, the insights gleaned from all can easily lead to new and fruitful perspectives.

• If I were to plot my services on an axis from least-used to most-used, what would I see?
• If I were to plot my services on an axis from most-mission-critical to least-mission-critical, what would I see?
• If I transformed these axes into a Cartesian coordinate system, where would my services lie? Would I feel the need to reposition any of these services to a new quadrant?
• If the CEO or president of my organization suddenly became my assistant, what would I have them do? Why? What would that say about me and my role?
• If the receptionist of my organization suddenly became my assistant, what would I have them do? Why? What would that say about me and my role?
• How would I characterize the differences between the tasks I would assign the CEO versus the receptionist? What does that say about me and my role?
• If I had to take away all my services, save for one, which one would remain? Why? Would this remaining service be the core of my identity? Should it?

As you can see, these questions are loaded with imaginary scenarios that could easily lead to oversimplification. However, the purpose of these questions is not to generate carefully framed hypotheses – at least not yet. Rather they are meant to provoke thought, begin dialog and reposition perspectives.

Try them out. Come up with your own. See if you can use them to spot emerging opportunities for you, your customers and the information industry as a whole.

Reece Dano is an embedded Information Specialist within the Consumer Insights and Trends Analyst Group at Ziba Design. He has worked in both corporate and academic libraries since 1999. He holds an MLIS from the University of Washington iSchool. He currently serves on the board of the Special Library Association’s Division of Advertising and Marketing and is Chair of SLA’s First Five Years Advisory Council. He was a recipient of the SLA Rising Star Award in 2010.

Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University

I was pleasantly surprised to become aware of the Future Ready 365 blog, and I’ll look forward to acquiring some good ideas from colleagues who are confronting the challenge of building a sustainable, resilient library. I’ve been writing and speaking about future-proofing for approximately the past two years, and have shared a number of ideas for ways in which librarians in all sectors of the profession can create libraries that are ready for whatever the future might hold. I first became interesting in pursuing this topic when I was asked to contribute to Library Journal’s issue on “Future Proofing Your Library”. I wrote:

Adopting new skills and new techniques to our work will help, but I also advocate that library workers need to take a whole new approach to how they identify problems and develop the right solutions. Design thinking is all about being a “problem finder” and then thoughtfully developing, in playfully creative ways and in teams of border-crossing professionals, appropriate solutions. A significant challenge for library workers is keeping up with user expectations. If we fail to provide our users with an experience that meets their expectations, then we lose, and in a hypercompetitive and hyperconsumptive society, that can be the greatest challenge to our long-term viability.

We must use design thinking to create great library experiences for our users, because when people can get their information anywhere, all that can differentiate our libraries is the unique experience we can deliver—but it must be based on personal relationships, it must deliver meaning to the user, and it must be well designed.

Any number of strategies may contribute to the librarian’s effort to create a future ready library. I offer a dozen such strategies in my article “Fit Libraries Are Future-Proof.” Some of the strategies are inspired by library practitioners; others come from for- and non-profit industries. The overarching philosophy that unites them is the design thinking approach, seeing oneself as a professional who brings intentional design to creating a future ready library. The point is that becoming future ready or future proof requires more than the occasional random actions and occurrences that move us forward incrementally. It demands intentional design. I hope others will take the time to follow the links in this post to learn more about design thinking and how it can contribute to a creating a fit library that is ready for anything the future throws our way.

Steven Bell is the Associate University Librarian at Temple University. He blogs at Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog, and Designing Better Libraries, and is coauthor of Academic Librarianship by Design. Learn more about his ideas on design thinking and user experience at stevenbell.info/design and http://dbl.lishost.org. You can follow Steven Bell at http://twitter.com/blendedlib.