Re-designing reference management software for efficient academic writing

In progress! Design sprint with Cal Hsiao. The goals of this design sprint are to identify user pain points when using reference management software and map out potential solutions to these pain points.

Research Question

How might we improve upon existing reference management software to be more intuitive and less interruptive of researchers' writing process?

Process

To better understand users' pain points using existing reference management software, we conducted user interviews with 3 participants.

Some questions we asked:

What are some apps/websites that you use to help you do your work?
Tell me about the last time you conducted a literature review. What steps did you take to do it?
Have you used any products/tools to help you conduct literature reviews? Can you tell me about how you use them?
What do you find frustating or difficult about this process?
What could make this process smoother or easier for you?

Based on the interviews, we identified one pain point to focus on and developed a user persona to guide the rest of the design sprint.

Ideation

Coming soon!

Results

Coming soon!