Field Notes for a One-Person UX Team

Alone but not without results (or community!)

Posted on April 14, 2025 in Blog Posts

Are you the only person thinking about user experience (UX) at your library? Most libraries don’t have a whole team dedicated to UX, so you’re not alone, even if it feels like it! This post offers practical tips, moral support, and bite-sized UX wins for solo UX advocates trying to make change from within.

Start small with user research

When you embark on a UX role, it’s so tempting to plan out a full slate of user research projects. Trust me, I know. But when you’re flying solo, it’s all too easy to underestimate the amount of time, mental energy, and emotional labor that it may take to conduct just one study. So start small! There’s no need to begin with a formal usability study or multiple focus groups. Instead, plan one pop-up table, following the model of a UX Café. All you need is a table, some tiny incentives (stickers or fun-size candies), and three interview questions or a brief usability testing plan. Once you’ve done one study, it’s much easier to plan the next one. And the next.

I’m part of a UX team in my current role at an academic library, and we conduct user research on a monthly basis. But when I was a solo UX person at a previous library job, I only had the bandwidth to organize one user research event on an annual basis, and that schedule was a resounding success in that environment.

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Involve skeptical colleagues

As a solo UX person, you will probably encounter “who moved my cheese?” moments from colleagues who are caught unaware by changes you make to your library’s website, services, or signage. You might also encounter resistance to changes you propose, from “that’s the way we’ve always done it” to “maybe that works elsewhere, but we do things differently here at this library.”

The best way that I’ve found to reduce such jarring (and potentially upsetting) situations is to involve your colleagues all along the way. Have them take notes during your pop-up study so they can see for themselves where real users are encountering confusion or misconceptions. Convene a website team, if one doesn’t exist already, and listen to ideas and suggestions with an open mind. Create mock-ups so everyone can test out new interface designs.

When you invite a colleague behind the scenes, you show them not just what you’re doing but why. They’ll benefit by having a voice in UX-related changes, and you’ll benefit from their perspective and their buy-in. It won’t always be smooth sailing, but a collaborative spirit is crucial for creating great user experiences.

Do UX work intermittently, if you need to

It can be exhausting to advocate consistently for UX (and accessibility) if you’re the only one doing it. No one can sustain a 100 percent effort for 100 percent of the time, especially in an adverse environment. It might be helpful to view some work as intermittent or variable. For example, if you’re in an academic library, you might put intense effort toward improving your library’s website in the spring and summer, then step back during the fall semester when more of your time is needed for instruction. Advocacy work requires breaks to avoid burnout.

Connect with other UXers

There are several active online communities for library UX folks:

• Code4Lib conferences (including regional ones), mailing list, Slack, and journal. This community tends to lean toward the more technical side of UX.
• Weave is the go-to journal for UX in libraries. Join the mailing list to keep up with new issues and opportunities to join our collaborative editorial team.
• UXLOL (UX Leadership of Libraries) is my favorite Slack. It’s full of cheerful library UX folks, prolific emoji use, and discussions that are both practical and encouraging. Email me for an invite link. (Really!)

You might feel alone in your institution, but there are lots of other library UX practitioners you can connect to. I hope to see you in one of those communities!

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