Transcript Webinar to discuss co-design Identity

Webinar to discuss co-design Identity Management Usability Project
Aims and Objectives:
Discuss usability survey findings to help shape and define the directions
of the usability project and to agree on next steps
9:00-9:05 Brief introduction to Blackboard Collaborate
-Audio Set up wizard
-Microphones need to be switched on to talk
-If unable to talk use chat facility
-We’re assuming everyone can see the slides – please let us know if not
-If you’d like to speak use ‘hands up facility’
-If anything is not working or you’re confused – let us know and we’ll manage it as best we can
9:05-9:20 Overview of usability survey findings
9:20-9:50 Discussion and next steps
9:50-10:00 Site visits Logistics
Jisc
Identity Management User Experience
Stuart Church
November 2013
Background
•
Pure Usability will be carrying out research into the usability of
current IdM systems for staff and students in HE (on behalf of
Jisc).
•
This research will involve an online survey and field visits to
institutions to carry out contextual interviews and user testing
with staff and students.
•
Prior to this, though, we are undertaking a short process of
‘Internal Discovery’ with project stakeholders (i.e. the IdM Task
Force) to better understand the strategic, cultural and political
landscape within which IdM is implemented.
•
This presentation outlines the key findings from a short survey
sent to the IdM Task Force, and summarised the views of the 8
respondents.
What are the benefits of IdM?
•
Allows staff & students to access specific services & resources
they need
•
Opportunity to provide appropriate resources and services to
users as their roles change
•
Risk management
•
Clarity about relationships/policies between people, institutions
and entitlements
•
Good IdM is robust and scalable. It allows quick response to
new opportunities and puts library resources into a wider strategic
context
•
Compliance with licenses & contracts
•
Efficiency & streamlining across institutions
•
Generating data & stats about usage
What are the challenges of IdM?
•
Complex license variations for services & resources
•
Increasingly diverse relationships between staff/students and
universities
•
Hard to define
•
Undocumented
•
Shift between groups
•
On- v off-campus
•
Assumption that this is an IT issue, rather than an organisational
one (it’s a much bigger job than senior managers assume, so they
don’t have the will)
•
Different/fragmented IT approaches in different parts of the
institution e.g. Open Source v Microsoft, Google v current IdM
systems.
•
Getting key stakeholders to work together (libraries & IT sometimes
seen as creating barriers)
Will IdM change in the next 2 years?
•
Perhaps (!) (Pretty even split of Yes/No)
•
Institutional change is relatively slow BUT there may be a cultural
change in understanding the importance of IdM for institutions
•
Potential changes could be:
•
More granularity
•
New initiatives (e.g HEAR, increasing use of Google in education,
more international students) driving the need for better and more
robust IdM
•
Better UX
•
More sophisticated analysis tools
What is ‘success’ in terms of IdM?
•
Students and staff getting easy access to resources to which they
are entitled (and stop complaining!)
•
Low cost (in admin and system maintenance)
•
Successful integration with other systems (e.g. SAP, Blackboard) and
able to integrate with new systems easily
•
Clear definitions of roles and entitlements
•
Meet licensing obligations to publishers
Who has the institutional power to change
things?
•
Senior University Managers (e.g. Registrar, PVCs, Dean) ultimately
responsible for strategy BUT may not be aware of implications and
importance of IdM and may choose to fund more visible activities
•
Middle Managers (e.g. heads, directors) responsible for
implementation, and for proposing policies to Senior Managers.
•
Culture is important - often find an ad hoc approach to IT systems
implementation. This is hard to change.
Who benefits most?
Average rank (lowest = most benefit)
•
There was no clear consensus
as to who benefits most from
IdM, although institutions were
marginally the highest ranked
group.
What’s the current UX like?
•
The current user-friendliness of IdM systems was considered to be mostly ‘poor’.
•
Possible reasons for this were:
•
Designed by techies
•
Lots of variation in terminology across providers
•
SSO often difficult to implement, so can have to log in frequently
•
Differences between on- and off-campus access, or publishers platforms
Barriers to better IdM
•
Complex licensing arrangements with publishers and service
providers
•
Interoperability preventing SSO
•
Institutional culture and fragmented IT landscape
•
Lack of time for IT staff to implement better solutions
•
Publishers approach to logins and lack of clarity about entitlement
Do users get any training & support?
•
Usually, no.
•
IdM should be intuitive!
•
Inductions are used to point some students and staff in the right
direction,though.
Institutional insights
•
Users do not like being frequently asked for their authentication
credentials too often (even once a session may be too much)
•
Users don’t have a feel for what they are entitled to access
•
Multiple IDs are confusing (e.g. Athens & Shibboleth)
•
Google Scholar can disrupt flow as it takes users to publishers sites
instead of Uni portals.
Questions & hypotheses
•
What do users do when they fail to get access to a resource?
•
How do users think about search?
•
How can local interfaces be adapted to make discovery easier?
Next steps
•
Plan research activities
•
Visits to 4 institutions to carry out contextual user research with:
•
•
Information gatekeepers
•
Students & staff
Online survey about IdM
Further information
Dr Stuart Church, Pure Usability Ltd
Email: [email protected]
Tel:
+44 (0)117 2309864
Skype: stuartc