A Service Design Case Study on University Library Services

User experience, within every service industry, became the center of attention with regards to developing and maintaining a positive customer experience. Moreover, as the existing literature argued, an ongoing management of user needs is required to develop these positive experiences. Arguably, these positive experiences can lead to beneficial outcomes for both the users and the service providers, such as user satisfaction, decreased incentives for switching services, as well as positive WOM and boosted loyalty. Additionally, previously conducted research has also pointed out that library services, specifically in university settings, are more complex than simply offering a study space or renting out books. Therefore, this study is aiming at identifying the various unsatisfied user needs as well as the causes of the different positive and negative experience within the library setting of Erasmus University Rotterdam. In more details, the study is concentrating on how can the student experiences be well-managed in a university library from a service design perspective. In this matter, service design refers to the methodology and point of view of the user experiences by mapping the disparate user behaviors throughout the service. Service design also offers a holistic view over the entire service which can greatly support the elimination of negative experiences and the enhancement of positive ones. Method: On the basis of the correlated literature, in-depth and semi-structured interviews appeared to be the most appropriate methodology to determine user needs and experiences and hence potentially create library personas and user journey. Interviewees, who actively use the EUR library services were randomly selected to participate. The analysis (data synthetization) illustrated that the library users have varying behavioral attributes, in addition to the unsatisfied needs and unfavorable experiences. Moreover, these negative experiences showed to be in a high correlation with the further user needs. Results: The key findings suggest that the students who use the library have a significant unpleasant experience with not finding a seat or not knowing the library’s availability beforehand. Furthermore, other feasible user needs were associated with infrastructural elements, such as personalized desk lamps or comfortable furniture. The main results show that a continuous management of user needs is demanded to reach an overall positive experience and user satisfaction. Conclusion: A compelling future recommendation is made with regards to satisfying user needs whilst tackling the most significant pain point. This suggestion entails a mobile application that shows real-time availability of the library and serves as a reservation system for study spaces. Finally, further research is recommended in terms of prototyping the aforementioned mobile application and examining the differences between varying study spaces at EUR, as well as the interconnectedness and relationships between the different library users.