PLANNED ACTIVITY
The challenge of any interface
design is to balance the needs of new users with
the expertise of system designers, since
the two classes of users may be familiar
with different vocabularies and interface syntax.
Efforts to insure that interface items and
commands are accessible to all user classes are well underway. Through
structured interviews, we can identify terms that are problematic or
strange, concepts or
phrasing that is troublesome to them as readers, and information that users
need to
get started with the testbed. The outcome of initial results is discussion
of and agreement on the need to include ``hot buttons''
to allow people
access to a glossary and the need for information that will provide an
overview of capacity for the user.
ACTUAL ACTIVITY
Definitions of terminology and explanations of functionality were incorporated into the current web interface. Terms which have explanations are underlined and hyperlinked to the appropriate pages. Research into user reactions to the terminology gave somewhat contradictory results. The online survey of beta testers asked specifically about terminology: there were generally favorable responses indicating no problems understanding the terms used. The surveys, however, were completed by a set of users who are highly educated and predominantly very comfortable with geospatial information and data. Analysis by members of the UCSB School of Education and at the University of Colorado indicated the use of many insider terms, which were dubbed ``ADL Speak'' and a consequent establishment of ADL insiders and outsiders - outsiders must learn the terminology as well as the structure of the system. The Target User Group activities also reveal a terminology barrier, especially with the education group for whom the whole system was new and its purpose and contents not clearly understood. This understanding of terminology problems will be integrated into the design of the new interface.
PLANNED ACTIVITY
The team is collecting data on users with different levels
of expertise, and user profiles for various user classes are beginning to
be better understood. Data collection is proceeding on three fronts, first by
structured interview sessions utilizing think-aloud protocols; second by
structured focus group sessions with system designers, and third by
transaction logging structured tasks as performed by various classes of
users and observing where in the tasks they have problems. Analyses of
transcribed protocols will help to design scenarios. Statistical analysis of
transaction logs will evaluate their coded implementation and subsequent
refinement in the testbed. Over time, the iteration between developed and
evaluated scenarios will produce a model of classes of user behavior for
specific Library tasks.
ACTUAL ACTIVITY
The Target User Group activities collected 56 user scenarios. This list of scenarios is a set of questions and information that users felt were appropriate for ADL. Each Target User Group was asked to identify the scenarios from the list that were most indicative of their task environments; these are reported elsewhere in this report. These scenarios will be used to guide interface design and system development by indicating the support which must be given to query formation and to the evaluation and analysis of the results sets. A parallel research effort, based on transaction logging, shows the paths taken by users through the current interface and can be used to understand the ways in which users interacted with the current interface. Users were also observed and recorded while using the system which provided another source of evidence of how the components of the current interface were used to accomplish a particular task. Also, several scenarios were developed as walk-throughs for the current interface to serve as tutorials. User studies indicated, however, that users generally avoided using the tutorials; there was also an indication that those who did use the tutorial were much more successful with using ADL.
PLANNED ACTIVITY
As data from specific components of the evaluation program are analyzed, it will become apparent which are informative and which are least intrusive to users. This will be a particular challenge for the Web version, as users are very quick to jump from one homepage to another, thus efficiency will be a prime concern for the evaluation team. Once demonstrated to be effective for evaluation purposes, we move components to the Web. At present, a small number of tools have been ported to the Web, and we anticipate this will continue in coming months. The testbed team supports these evaluations by providing appropriate ``hooks'' in the testbed to log user interface events for subsequent analysis, specifically:
ACTUAL ACTIVITY
This task addressed primarily the implementation of sessions logging for analysis and the good/bad/comment buttons for direct user feedback. These ways of collecting user interaction and reactions were in place for the year. Evaluation of the data is in progress and is described elsewhere in this report.
PLANNED ACTIVITY
A key strategy of ADL is to provide users
with access to the information that is inferable
from the items in the library collections.
In particular, this implies that users must access
varieties of items and apply procedures that extract
appropriate information.
We will investigate the concept of ``user workspaces''
in which users can assemble documents by directly
accessing them from the library collections,
from parts of documents, or by applying information
extracting procedures to documents.
An initial design of a workspace is currently underway,
and the WP already contains a very basic workspace
in which users can assemble items downloaded from
the library collections.
ACTUAL ACTIVITY
The idea of user workspaces in which the processing of retrieved information can be performed is currently being incorporated into the new user interface and supporting functionality that is in the design stage. Owing to resource restrictions, however, little progress over last year's statement of the problem has been.
PLANNED ACTIVITY
The visualization of spatial information becomes increasingly more
difficult as the relative data density grows. There are several
aspects of georeferenced information where this becomes evident.
The first is in the presentation of the summary of a library's
holdings, such that a user can grasp with a single view the majority
of the collection's area of coverage. Interesting views may focus on the
number of items in the collection, on the total or average number
of bytes per area, and on the minimum and maximum resolution. Another
area of interest is in the presentation of a non-trivially large search
result of a geographical database query. Problems include both the
assignment of weightings to each returned footprint and also a
mechanism for footprint clustering and the corresponding cluster
displays. Finally, when results from queries of more than one database
are being displayed simultaneously, such as, in the case of Alexandria,
results from both the Gazetteer and Catalog, results must be visually
tagged and easily identified as to their source of origin. (Use of color
must be limited, if possible, so that access to the data is not prohibited
to the color-blind.)
ACTUAL ACTIVITY
A method of displaying an overview of the geographic density of the ADL holdings was implemented in the current ADL web interface. Areas with more items in the database are shaded a darker color than other areas. Several gradations of color are used to show various levels of geographic coverage. This visualization of the coverage of ADL holdings will be enhanced in the design of the new interface, where overviews on additional dimensions are planned: e.g. time and genre.
PLANNED ACTIVITY
This is an ongoing task that will be undertaken in close co-operation
with the Testbed Team and the Alexandria Design Review Panel
(see report on user interface evaluation research above.)