When the UX Office was created at Fondren Library in December 2010, some of the departmental goals were to do ethnographic and observational studies, and conduct usability studies on our digital tools. The UX Office submits paperwork, including the study design, through an online system in collaboration with the Rice Office of Institutional Effectiveness that is submitted to the Institutional Review Board “IRB” at Rice. Research involving human subjects, including usability testing, generally needs to go through the IRB process, unless one is not going to publish or write about the results. If the results are only used to improve the business process, it generally doesn’t need IRB. When approval is granted, then the research can start!
We have mentored multiple staff members on various aspects of the research process at Rice, including CITI training (a required online IRB training course), and designing effective research protocols. Please let us know if we can be of assistance to you!
Rice rolled out a new online system last Fall, named Cayuse, that helps store and manage the many IRB’s maintained by departments on campus. Currently the UX Office has approved IRB’s for the following studies:
- Institutional Repository Usability and Ethnographic Study (Stakeholder: Digital Scholarship Services)(ongoing study from 2012-current)
- Understanding Researcher Needs for Finding Aids and Testing Usability of ArchivesSpace (Collaboration with University of Houston and Amanda Focke)
- Fondren Library Website Usability Testing (ongoing study from 2011-current)
- Research Support Services for the Field of Religious Studies (Amanda Thomas and Elka Tenner)
Past studies include: Ithaka S+R Survey for Fondren Library, Understanding Desired Usage of BRC Library Space, Understanding Research Flow: An Ethnographic Study of Humanities Researchers, Discovering Discovery: How Rice Researchers Find the Sources They Need, and Survey and Usability Studies on Fondren Library’s Mobile Website.
