The National Records of Scotland (www.nrscotland.gov.uk) has added a new section to its Corporate Information page at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/about-us/corporate-information#ce, offering a summary of findings from a research project into its 'customer personas'.
From the site:
Audience research – customer personas
An audience research project, undertaken by Storm ID on behalf of NRS, aimed to explore how our customers engage with us both online and face-to-face to find out more about the different types of customer we support and their needs, in order to develop a framework of customer personas.
Each persona is a fictional but realistic example of a typical NRS customer, grouped by age, location, level of interaction and what challenges and motivates their behaviour. These are grouped into type of user, from novice to expert, and cover customers of both online and face-to-face services.
The customer personas framework will be used to help us understand our audiences better and ultimately help inform future service improvements.
Two documents are offered in support:
The documents provide an interesting insight into the needs and experiences of users of various NRS services, including the NRS website, the Historic Search Room, the ScotlandsPeople offerings, the Scottish Register of Tartans website, the Scottish Handwriting website, and more. Positive points and 'pain points' are discussed for the various offerings, and some solutions proposed.
From the perspective of family historians there are some extremely positive comments on the ScotlandsPeople project, for example, and a recommendation that a subscription model be offered for many users. From p.36:
"A subscription model would benefit students, those that find the service expensive, and those that are unable to travel to the centres in Edinburgh. It may also be a useful option during the periods that the ScotlandsPeople Centre is closed, allowing users to access as many documents as they want within a 12-24 hour period using the online service."
But on other NRS offerings it has to be said that some of the findings sound depressingly familiar, and there is a fairly lengthy list of 'pain points' - the layout of the building, a dated website, the difficulty in accessing various records, the disconnection of some records types available in one part of the building that relate to documents held in another, and more. On NRS search room opening hours, for example, it notes the following on page 40:
"Participants that are in full time jobs said that they could not visit the search rooms as regularly as they may like due to the opening hours. Some that were able to visit during their working day said that the opening hours would benefit from being longer because they can review more documents in the time available."
And on the number of items that can be ordered on a visit:
"Some participants said that only being able to order 12 documents at a time in the Historical Search Room limits the amount of information that they can go through. This is particularly prevalent amongst participants that have travelled to Edinburgh from outside of Edinburgh or overseas. The number of documents that they can review during their day is important because users need to garner as much relevant information as possible for professional purposes."
However, on a much more positive note, the role of the archivists is championed by most who have sought their help.
The report has many recommendations, which, if enacted, would provide a massive enhancement to services to users - on opening hours, for example, on page 41:
"Increasing opening hours to allow more readers to visit during their working week. Most suggestions were opening until up to 7pm on a weekday evening and on a Saturday to facilitate these readers."
And even a recommendation on crowd-sourcing (p.42):
"Expert users of the services could be a useful community to help support digitisation of records through creating indexes and transcriptions of records. Some participants have taken part in these activities and are actively managing communities of genealogists that would be interested in contributing to the process of digitising records that are currently unavailable online."
Some issues are not directly addressed - I could find no discussion of problems with availability of records due to off-site storage, for example, nor, perhaps surprisingly, discussion about disabled access for some users at the NRS, which I have heard several folk raise concerns about before.
Nevertheless, there is a lot here for the NRS to get stuck into, but the proof of the pudding - and the validity of the exercise itself - will be in how the NRS addresses the various problems raised.
(With thanks to @NatRecordsScot)
Chris
Just out, Sharing Your Family History Online is on sale at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.
