Discovering our Users: A Multi-Campus Usability Study of Primo

The 23 California State University libraries recently migrated to Ex Libris’ discovery system, Primo. A system-wide Discovery Working Group created a Usability Task Force, composed of librarians from four California State University libraries, and charged them with conducting usability testing and reporting their findings back to the consortium. The findings from the user testing were used to create a set of recommendations and best practices that system administrators could employ to customize their Primo interface. Additionally, the Chancellor’s Office used the data from the user testing to inform the creation of a central package of CSS, JavaScript and image files, which was made available to the 23 campuses. A second round of testing was conducted after the application of the central package and configuration changes. The application of these changes facilitated the discovery of resources across the library’s collection.