Your Technology Outreach Adventure: Tools for Human-Centered Problem Solving

Berman (innovations manager, San Jose P.L.) argues that public libraries underserve community members who lack technology literacy and cannot attend the library. The solution? Technology outreach, which is not merely introducing patrons to new devices but teaching creative thinking and problem solving. Berman proposes using design-thinking techniques, comprised of identifying outcomes, meeting stakeholders, brainstorming, prototyping and evaluating, emphasizing multiple iterations, and learning from failures. She provides examples and case studies for each step. Design thinking will be familiar to those who use contextual inquiry, and will pair well with outcome-based evaluation. The major strength of this volume is the framework: design thinking can be applied to all forms of outreach (not just technology), to workflow and process improvement, and to policy drafting. The limitation, however, is the time and staff intensity of the process, with which smaller libraries might struggle. Additionally, the case studies mostly reflect a larger, resource- and personnel-rich organization. Still, the design-thinking method is adaptable with some effort.