Austin Public Library

TERO

INDUSTRY:

SERVICE LEARNING

CLIENT:

AUSTIN PUBLIC LIBRARY

TIMELINE:

12 WEEKS; SPRING 2025

ROLE:

UX RESEARCH & DESIGN

about.

See the Prototype

The Austin Public Library (APL) is a vital hub that has proudly served Austin for more than a century. With over 20 branches serving communities across Austin, TX, customers have access to not only books and literature, but also to technology, art galleries, events, and even employment resources

challenge.

The main challenge for this project was to original Austin Public Library (APL) Youth page offers a wealth of resources, but the dense, text-heavy layout makes it difficult to navigate—especially for parents and caregivers using mobile devices.

The scope of this project was limited to designing for parents and caregivers of children aged 0 - 12. We were also required to make no changes to the main navigation of the APL website.

process.

Stakeholder Kickoff

This project began with a meeting with our stakeholders at Austin Public Library, Sarah Cronin and Tatiana Gonzalez.

They identified several issues they were having with the Youth page:

Text-heady design
Difficulty in keeping content updated due to a small and decentralized team
They didn't understand what their users actually needed from this page

Additionally, our stakeholders were interested in developing new personas from our research.

Project Scope:

Redesign was limited to the Youth page (Events and Homepage were out of scope)
No changes to main navigation - This included not adding a secondary navigation
Target users - Parents & Caregivers of children 0 - 12

As this was a student-led project, we had a limited timeline with which to work. Other challenges my group and I needed to work around involved the pre-existing widgets on the Youth page that could not be redesigned.

Competitive Analysis

The scope of this project was limited to designing for parents and caregivers of children aged 0 - 12. We were also required to make no changes to the main navigation of the APL website.

User Interviews

Interviews began haphazardly. In a rush to get the project underway, a couple of group members headed to library branches across Austin to interview parents and caregivers attending children's events.

I quickly recognized the need for structure and convinced my team that we needed to be organized before moving forward with more interviews. With input from my team members, I drafted our interview guide, creating versions for both moderated sessions and guerilla-style interviews.

22 Participants
Mix of Parents, Caregivers, and Youth Librarians

Question

Insights

We used an affinity map to synthesize our research and learned that our participants cared most about the following elements of the APL Youth page:

Overall Visual Design: Current content structure was found to not be engaging and visually appealing.
Information Organization: Participants felt overwhelmed in their effort to locate the information they or their customers needed.
Accessibility/Language: Making sure that content was accurate for Spanish-speaking customers and aligned with established WCAG guidelines.

After reviewing these insights, I wanted to learn more about how the City of Austin was…

Making information more accessible for Ausitnites who speak a language other than English.
How Austin handles the translation of their website and if this could be implemented in the redesign of the APL Youth Page.

I browsed the City of Austin website and discovered:

In addition to English and Spanish, the City of Austin government website offers direct translation into 13 languages.
Austinites can download free iSpeak cards (available in 40+ languages) to assist individuals with language and translation services. Alternatively, these cards can be picked up at the Austin Public Library.

In discussing this with my group, we thought it would be a good idea to align our redesign with the direct translation options offered on the City of Austin website.

We presented these findings along with our insights to our stakeholder, but were informed that the language translation of the Austin Public Library website was handled by a third-party service that they were currently under contract with — Direct translation was out of their hands and was only available in Spanish.

While still making sure that we were designing for accessibility throughout this project, we re-focused our 3rd insight to Events since this is one of the main reasons parents/caregivers visit the library website.

Overall Visual Design: Current content structure was found to not be engaging and visually appealing.
Information Organization: Participants felt overwhelmed in their effort to locate the information they or their customers needed.
Events: Kids' events are the main reason our participants visit the site, but the youth page gets overlooked as a direct resource.

Wireframes

As we began to ideate, each team member sketched out their individual ideas. The resulting low-fidelity wireframe borrows elements

results.

The finished model and photographs produced for STONE MIND exceeded expectations. The product photos delivered a powerful visual impact, highlighting the unique texture and structure of the stones under varied lighting. The model became a striking artistic centerpiece, serving both as an art piece and an effective marketing asset. The images were later used in campaigns and as inspirational visuals within design and art communities.