8:30-9:00

Coffee and registration

9:00-Noon

Morning Workshops

9:00-Noon
Room 309

User Experience: Crafting Recommendations
Maria Dahman, User Experience Researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison

You’ve gathered website analytics, run surveys, and observed how people use your website and other digital resources– now what? Impressive user research doesn’t matter much if the research isn’t used. More than just communicating what we learned in our research, communicating what we recommend for website or application improvements and framing the recommendations to our audiences in meaningful ways is a skill of its own. In this workshop, we’ll look at findings from several types of research projects and work through positive and negative examples of how the findings are used to create recommendations. This is useful for both qualitative user experience research (interviews, usability testing) and quantitative research (page analytics, usability scales). Be a better advocate for your users. Make the hard work from your interviews and other user research count!

9:00-Noon
Room 313

Process Design: Getting from Here to There
Stef Morrill, Executive Director, WiLS
Melissa McLimans, Community Liaison and Service Specialist, WiLS

Drawing on previous WiLSWorld Workshops on project management, design thinking, and lean practices, this workshop will teach you the WiLS model of process design. You’ll learn to define your objective (addressing an issue, developing a collaboration, pursuing an opportunity, etc.) and determine the steps, activities, tools, and people that should be involved to get you there. We want this workshop to relate to your real-world work, so each attendee will be asked to identify an issue or objective they want to address at their library or organization. By the end of the workshop, you will know how to confirm and clarify your objective and create a roadmap that will guide your work toward successfully addressing your objective.

12:00-1:00

Lunch
Lunch is on your own but feel free to ask WiLS for recommendations!

1:00-5:00

Afternoon Workshop

1:00-5:00
Room 313

Gordon F. Goodwin

Sarah Lawton

The Role of Libraries in Advancing Racial Equity
Gordon F. Goodwin, Government Alliance on Race and Equity Midwest Regional Project Manager, Race Forward
Sarah Lawton, Neighborhood Library Supervisor, Madison Public Library

We know libraries to be places of learning, gathering, and growth. We know libraries to be ideally situated to do the work of bringing together our community members as well as individually providing information services to them. We also know libraries to be organizations that have perpetuated inequities, historically and today. We must take a critical look at our practices and policies and move toward improving the broadest possible access to our valuable resources, services, and staff. We hope you’ll join us for this workshop with WiLS and your colleagues to do that work together.

Workshop attendees will gain an understanding of the library’s role in contributing to racial inequity and our responsibility to advance racial equity and develop a shared racial equity analysis, including definitions of key terminology and concepts like racial equity and inequity, implicit and explicit bias, and individual, institutional, and structural racism.

Our workshop curriculum is provided by The Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), a program of Race Forward. GARE is a national network of government working to achieve racial equity and advance opportunities for all. GARE libraries’ racial equity work and insights will be featured during the training. To ensure that this workshop is as accessible to our members as possible, registration costs are being subsidized by WiLS.