Suma is an open-source mobile web-based assessment toolkit for collecting and analyzing observational data about the usage of physical spaces and services. Suma’s goals include streamlining existing data collection, enabling fast, hassle-free mobile data collection, providing sophisticated data analysis and visualization capabilities for non-technical users, and promoting observational data analysis as an integral part of service and space design and day-to-day planning. Conceptually, Suma attempts to apply the longstanding user research benefits of web analytics to physical spaces and services.

Suma has proven to be far more efficient for staff than previous methods for data collection. The Suma team has found that a standardized data structure is invaluable to our ability to build analysis tools for non-technical users that can be used across the board for a wide variety of data collection initiatives. Suma is also used extensively to assess the usage of our large, new James B. Hunt, Jr. library in order to conduct a post-occupancy assessment of new services and spaces, with a particular emphasis on newer service models such as roaming reference. Suma is used by dozens of staff at our organization, and there are over 100 implementations at other academic libraries.

Examples of the current uses for this toolkit include the collection and analysis of data relating to: