04 / RESEARCH TOOLS

PROQUEST REFWORKS

Reframing a legacy citation manager around the real work of collecting, organizing, and using research.

PROJECT SIGNAL / 04

MY SCOPEUX RESEARCH + PRODUCT DESIGNTEAMRESEARCHERS, LIBRARIANS, STUDENTS, PRODUCT + ENGINEERINGTIMEFRAME2013—2017

01 / THE PROBLEM

RefWorks was powerful but carried the weight of a legacy interface and a feature model that did not always match how modern students and researchers worked across sources and devices.

02 / THE EVIDENCE

Research with librarians and users connected daily workflow friction to larger product opportunities. In 2016, I shared the research approach and its influence on the redesign with more than 500 librarians.

03 / THE DECISION

Organize the experience around the research journey—collect, understand, organize, cite—then simplify the product where its inherited structure obscured those tasks.

04 / THE COLLABORATION

The redesign relied on librarians as expert partners, students and researchers as users, and close work with product and engineering to translate findings into a releasable system.

05 / THE OUTCOME

The work helped shape a relaunched RefWorks experience and demonstrated how a sustained research practice could influence product priorities—not only interface details.

06 / THE REFLECTION

Research earns influence when it gives a team a clearer model of the work people are actually trying to do.

PROJECT EVIDENCE3 ARTIFACTS

Legacy RefWorks interface — 01 / The legacy product made both its capability and accumulated complexity visible.

RefWorks redesigned interface — 02 / The redesign created a clearer working surface for managing sources and research.

RefWorks relaunch screens — 03 / A renewed product language carried the experience across core research tasks.

NEXT IMAGE PASS

The story is in place. These are the most useful original artifacts to bring in next.

DECISION STORY

The duplicate-management problem as a compact research → design → validation sequence.