Robin Davis
Name Pronunciation
rah-bin day-visPronouns
She / HerTo acknowledge that assumptions about someone’s gender identity could be incorrect, many organizations, including NC State, have begun to encourage community members to include a brief statement of their gender pronouns as they introduce themselves within a group.
Associate Head, User Experience
Department:
User ExperiencePhone: (919) 515-3708
Email: [email protected]
0000-0002-0548-0803
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Inclusive Excellence
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Languages
- French (Intermediate Reading, Writing, & Speaking)
- Italian (Beginner Reading)
Selected Works
- Conducting Pop-Up User Research That Moves a Project Forward (TRLN Annual Meeting 2023; co-presented with Bea Downey)
- Better Web Forms: Practical Tips for Evaluation, Accessibility, and Design (Designing for Digital 2023; co-presented with Erik Olson)
- Emails Are UX, Too: How to Make Better Overdue Notices and Other Communications (Designing for Digital 2021; co-presented with Silvia Sheffield)
- Participatory Paper Prototyping: Revealing User Needs and Priorities (Designing for Digital 2020)
- See all presentations
Recent Works
Snippets, subject lines, and exclamation points: A case study in constructing better library emails
Davis, R. C., Partlow, M., Pearce, D., & Sheffield, S. (2022). Snippets, subject lines, and exclamation points: A case study in constructing better library emails. Weave: Journal of Library User Experience, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.3998/weaveux.1634
Internet Connection: AI and Libraries: Supporting Machine Learning Work
Davis, R. C. (2020). Internet Connection: AI and Libraries: Supporting Machine Learning Work. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian, 36(3), 109–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639269.2017.1771046
Uncovering the Mystery of How Users Find and Use eBooks through Guerilla Usability Testing
Davis, R. C., & Song, X. (2020). Uncovering the Mystery of How Users Find and Use eBooks through Guerilla Usability Testing. SERIALS REVIEW, 46(3), 193–200. https://doi.org/10.1080/00987913.2020.1806648
My Projects
Shout-outs From My Colleagues
Shout-outs are kind words from Libraries staff to other Libraries staff for going out of their way to be extra awesome at their job.
Bravo to the team that upgraded the Libraries website to Drupal 10 — Erik Olson, Eric Pauley, Meredith Wynn, and Chris Bowen! And big thanks to Amir Blair and Robin Davis for testing. Keeping our large, complex website up to date is important, difficult work. It's the kind of work that would be easy to postpone and get behind on. Not this team! Because of them, we have a well-oiled machine.
— Josh Boyer
Robin & Bea made the task of revising our department landing page a great experience. Our team really appreciated and enjoyed being able to exercise our creativity and learn best practices for users. The results speak for themselves and we can't wait to work on the rest our site with them.
— Sandra Varry
A recently published article describes the incredibly thoughtful and practical approaches that this multi-departmental, 4-person team took to create user-centered library email notifications. A quote I love from the article: "As we evaluated and rewrote our email templates, we considered how a stressed user or a user in crisis would react to the email. We repeatedly asked ourselves questions beginning with “What about a user who…” or “What if the user…?” We aimed to find a way to add the least amount of stress to our users’ already stressful lives, while still suggesting that they take action in response to some of these email templates." Check it out: Davis, R. C. & Partlow, M. & Pearce, D. & Sheffield, S., (2022) “Snippets, subject lines, and exclamation points: A case study in constructing better library emails”, Weave: Journal of Library User Experience 5(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/weaveux.1634
— Hilary Davis
I'm grateful to the complex and conscientious work of the Collaborative and Remote Work Task Force (CRWTF). They created outstanding guidance that is so well-organized and accessible! I revisit the Confluence pages on a regular basis, and consider them one of the most important foundations for our work. The guidance, tips, and examples for conducting hybrid meetings, setting up and implementing the onboarding process, and the advice for team building are incredibly helpful for all of us, most especially middle managers and project managers. The meeting free days and TL;DR summaries in each section of the guidance documentation represent the intentionality and care put into this work by this amazing team. Thank you to Hillary Fox, Kevin Beswick, Robin Davis, Mia Partlow, Lynn Whittenberger, and Jennifer Garrett for supporting our work through the Collaborative and Remote Work Task Force (CRWTF).
— Hilary Davis
Simply put, Web Team solves problems, and fast. An increasing number of Libraries departments are producing different kinds of content across different platforms. Web Team has been adept at not only enabling departments to produce new kinds of content, but also helping External Relations leverage and re-use that content. The team has been incredibly responsive to (and patient with!) out-of-left-field, what-if questions by thinking through the implications of back-end changes from both a technology perspective and a consistency one. They respond quickly with solutions and implementations informed by the Libraries' overall mission, rather than playing defense against changes to the complex infrastructure that they have to maintain. Web Team is always helpful, thoughtful, reasonable, and fast.
— Chris Vitiello
Robin and Katharine exceeded all of my expectations during recent usability testing with input from FOL Board members. They were both thoughtful, patient, astute in their considerations, and incredibly helpful in summarizing ways to improve the FOL and giving webpages. Our participants seemed delighted to be able to contribute and part of their enthusiasm stemmed from the easy conversations with this diplomatic duo. While Robin and Katharine naturally put the test group at ease, they also ensured we were well prepared for discussions and follow up. Thanks to them both for their extraordinary efforts!
— Tina Morrison
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