I’m so happy I could be twins. We now have an honest-to-goodness Library User Experience (UX) Specialist: Amy Deschenes, who came to us from Simmons College, where she was the Systems and Web Applications Librarian. Amy has only been here for a couple of months, but the buzz has already gotten around about how much she can help us gain a user’s point of view; she did some work with undergraduate and graduate students right away upon getting to campus. I’d heard a lot of good things about her, and this summer our library is transitioning to LibGuides 2.0, which means it’s time for an overhaul of my LibGuides…so I wrote and asked if I could meet with her for pointers. Talk about a seasoned dog being taught new tricks! In about 20 minutes she (very nicely and collegially) reviewed one of my guides with me and made such right-on-the-money suggestions (based on the work she’d already done with our students) that I could feel a light bulb going on over my head. I’m not exaggerating: she told me what the students said they liked in a guide, what drew them into it, what tended to put them off, and tips for the organization, arrangement, and look of the guide to get their attention and hold it. I now feel much better prepared to create new LibGuides that will be set up in the users’ best interests, and that is such a good thing. But that’s not all that’s been happening vis-à-vis UX at my home base. Shortly after my consultation with Amy, the Harvard Library Research, Teaching, & Learning Standing Committee sponsored several UX events, including “Holistic UX: How to Make User-Focused Decisions with Library Data,” a keynote presentation by Matthew Reidsma, a Library Journal 2013 Tech Leader Mover and Shaker; Web Services Librarian at Grand Valley State University Libraries in Allendale, MI; Harvard alum (Divinity School, Masters of Theological Studies); and library mensch. He talked about “how to use library data that you may already be collecting to help inform the decision-making process” in your library—and just to prove his menschness, he’s made his presentation available for everybody on Vimeo. That's still not all! Amy and Matthew gave two workshops the following day, in which they led groups of us in exploring methods for collecting and analyzing user research. I was able to participate in the afternoon workshop on how to conduct physical space assessments, and yet again, had my eyes opened wider about how to gather pertinent information about research and library use by researchers (rather than by librarians). And since they are both library mensches, they’re making the slides from both workshops available to everyone on Slideshare. One technique they had us practice in the afternoon workshop was letter writing: asking us to write either a love letter or a breakup letter to some service or equipment about which we felt strongly. The idea was that one would ask users to do this to let us know which library services, places, etc. they love or hate—so much better a method than simply asking them, “what do you like about the library?” I had a wonderful time writing a breakup letter to a certain nameless library website that I find extraordinarily useless and frustrating. In addition to everything else she’s doing, Amy has a book forthcoming: Free Technology for Libraries (Rowman & Littlefield, Aug.). Matthew is the author of Responsive Web Design for Libraries (ALA, 2014), and the Editor in Chief of Weave: Journal of Library User Experience, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal for Library UX professionals published by Michigan Publishing (also on the Weave editorial board is Josh Hadro, formerly of LJ and now Deputy Director of NYPL Labs at the New York Public Library). Amy’s got a great (and useful) article in the premiere issue of Weave (Volume 1, issue 1, 2014): “Improving the Library Homepage through User Research—Without a Total Redesign,” the first line of whose abstract is the welcome statement: “Conducting user research doesn't have to be difficult, time consuming, or expensive.” And Amy is proving that at Harvard with her wonderful, and most welcome, work, every day. Viva UX, and hooray! for giving it the attention it deserves. And thank you, Amy and Matthew, for helping us see from the user’s perspective. Read eReviews, where Cheryl LaGuardia and Bonnie Swoger look under the hood of the latest library databases and often offer free database trials