Last weekend I had the good fortunate to attend a combined user experience and digital humanities conference at Pratt. It was short conference, with just three speaker portions: a couple of Pratt SILS students who are working on different aspects of UX at New York University, Pratt alumnus Sean Fitzell who presented on usability evaluation in digital humanities, and Will Dean, who spoke about the development of his website “Hidden Worlds.” Each of these talks contributed a good deal of information about the
The first presentations revolved around the usability and functionality of the New York University library website. The three young women who spoke covered libguides, Electronic Discovery System (EDS), and the actual library homepage, all of which are sadly underutilized and under-visited. This past semester, all three interns have engaged in student surveys, heat maps, and rebranding as solutions to the under-usability problem. Their findings were inconclusive at the time of the conference, namely because they were still ongoing, but all clearly pointed to a complete redesign and understanding of how students both searched the library and interacted with the library website.
The second speaker was Sean Fizell, a Pratt alumnus who now works in information architecture and UX research. He spoke about usability and evaluation in the digital humanities. He emphasized the importance of knowing who is using a certain feature, why they are using it, and how it could be made better. This era is one of digital ubiquity, and the consumer has many options to search and research. This increased usage leads to increased expectations, and these expectations are no longer just limited to commercial or academic research. Now anyone – ANYONE – can become a veritable expert in nearly anything, given the right amount of time. All those who engage with a web page as the user expect something simple and sleek. Essentially, they expect Google. It is up to every developer and designer to bear in mind the expectations of their audience, and accommodate those expectations in the most realistic way possible.
Sean then provided a few examples of projects that seem to understand how DH and UX complement and work together. The LAIRAH project (Log Analysis of Internet Resources in the Arts and Humanities) at the University College in London was one. The project seeks to study the current existing online digital resources and determine how they are used and how they can be improved. Essentially, it is a project that seeks to understand DH usage, an undertaking not yet seen, but long overdue. JISC is another project based at Oxford that aims to be the UK’s expert on digital technologies. Their goal is to make those using these technologies for education and research to make their tools more efficient and streamlined. Essentially, the goal is to combine DH and UX.
Sean concluded that all digital humanities teams should try and have at least one UX designer on board, or at the very least partner with an organization that can help. He stressed that we all must get past the notion that if the user doesn’t understand then it’s their problem. The lack of understanding and intuitiveness is ultimately on the designer. Finally, he realizes that UX and DH are different fields and as such are approaching problems from different angles, but they are relying on similar information and as such should see each other as partners rather than adversaries.
Will Dean was the final speaker, presenting on his class project turned continuing website Hidden Worlds, a linked data project devoted to pseudonyms and gender in science fiction authors. The website displays this information in a visually linked model and allows exploration of the information about both the authors and the works. The initial plan involved three sections: data modeling, data sourcing, and website construction. There were a wide variety of software and elements involved in this project, which gives insight to how much must be invested in a project. Will’s project is comparatively small, but involved large amounts of time, programming knowledge, software, and transfer of information. It is no surprise that those projects larger in scope require so much investment, both in funding and time. The event concluded with questions and bagels, as any event at Pratt must.
* * * * * * * *
All of the talks provided greater understanding into how UX and DH coincide. In a future class we will discuss this subject in more depth, but the readings indicate that there is currently a severe disconnect. For those engaged in digital humanities, the emphasis is on the research and how it can be utilized, not how it is displayed and understood. Since DH exists primarily in a high academic world, there doesn’t seem to be pressure to translate any findings into a common vernacular.
One of the biggest limitations in this whole UX/DH endeavor is time. Studies find that “tools do not need to be more sophisticated (because this increases skepticism and decreases the possibility of a modular approach to building and using simple, intuitive tools), but that ease of use and transparency are far more important.”[1. Gibbs, Fred and Owens, Trevor (2012). “Building Better Digital Humanities Tools: Towards Broader Audiences and user-centered designs.” Digital Humanities Quarterly. Retrieved from: http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/6/2/000136/000136.html] As we saw with Will’s project, even a small project takes so much time. There is time needed to educate those involved, to produce, and to design it in such a way that is understandable and easy to use. It can be a huge deterrent for those who are working in Digital Humanities that may want to design their findings in an aesthetically pleasing and informative way, but do not have the time or knowledge base.
Finally, it is important to know that feedback from the consumer has a limit. Sean Fitzell strongly opposed the notion that the user is always wrong, but it is dangerous to swing entirely the other way, to incorporating everything the user requests. There is an early Simpsons episode where Homer Simpson learns he has a wealthy half-brother, who has made his money in car manufacturing. He taps Homer to design a car for the “common man,” and instructs his designers to incorporate every idea he has. The result is this:
Retrieved from: http://www.latintimes.com/homer-car-simpsons-comes-life-video-128864
Needless to say, the finished product ruins Homer’s half-brother. But it is a valuable and humorous look into the importance of knowing when to listen to the user, and when to listen to the expert.
The entire event was a great display on how people involved in both Digital Humanities and User Experience are finally starting to see how they can work together. Digital Humanities won’t be fully accepted or understood as an academic field until it can learn to get their findings across in an understandable and accessible manner. As a librarian of the very near future, this conference was helpful in getting across the importance of both fields, separately and together.