Do you know what your users are doing?

I remember an old commercial in the United States using the line ‘Do you [with you pronounced as if it was in all caps and underlined!] know where your children are?’ that was used to put fear into the heart of every parent. Now I am wondering if publishers need to be asking ourselves the same question. By users I mean end-users: students in the libraries; faculty members travelling to conferences or walking to classrooms; professional researchers working in the corporate or non-profit world outside of universities. With the explosion of mobile devices in the last year, the limitations on what users could do are on their way out the window – along with their old expectations of what they should be able to do. As publishers, most of us do not have much hard-core information about what users are actually doing. In the new world of multiple user devices for every individual, this has to change. We can no longer get by assuming we know what they want to do. This was highlighted to me in two fascinating presentations earlier this year that have stuck in my head: