On April 12, 2014, the New York City Digital Humanities Student Group, UX/IA Pratt, and ASIS&T @ Pratt hosted the UX/DH event at Pratt SILS, featuring presentations on current and possible intersections between user experience and digital humanities. The first panel, “User Experience at New York University Libraries,” featured three Pratt SILS UX Practicum students discussing their work at NYU libraries. Carolyn Li-Madeo spoke her work on the LibGuides CMS project, which is focused on making LibGuides findable and usable for NYU students. Challenges include heterogenous nature of LibGuide resources (over 500+ libguides, all built by different authors with different content, layout, and navigation) and limited analytics. The LibGuide CMS team combined traditional focus groups with guerilla testing in order to gain insight on how students conduct research online.The project aims to redesign the LibGuides landing page to set the tone for a universal NYU libraries style guide, as well as to inform librarians and other content creators on how to best present libguides to users. Juliana Culbert presented on integrating NYU’s web scale discovery tool, EDS, within the rest of its discovery interfaces. She also conducted guerilla testing, using heat maps to discover that while users were actively using the EDS search, they didn’t know what content they were searching. Finally, Samantha Raddatz presented on re-doing the information architecture of the entire NYU library website, which hasn’t been updated since 2008. Research found that users’ task based goals were not being met, and her team is using competitive analysis and personas to inform redesign decisions related to both content and navigation. Library patron privileges were helpful in creating personas (especially for new user types, like certain international students) and this finding can be helpful when thinking about personas for digital humanities projects.
Sean Fitzell’s presentation, “Usability and Evaluation in the Digital Humanities,” stressed the importance of evaluation in generating and sustaining interest in digital humanities projects. It is not about simplifying projects and tools; it is about understanding and removing obstacles. Making DH more intuitive allows users to directly engage with content without struggling to understand interfaces, which is especially important for crowdsourcing projects. Why? In our era of digital ubiquity, users have increased expectations for digital services and tools. They expect Google functionality from academic and cultural heritage projects, not just commercial and consumer applications.
Surveying the current state of usability testing in the digital humanities, Fitzell mentioned several studies investigating usage of DH projects and tools. The University College of London (UCL) conducted Log Analysis of Digital Resources in the Arts and Humanities (LAIRAH), finding that one third of all DH projects go unused. Furthermore, user testing and evaluation were rarely implemented, despite user-expressed confusion and frustration regarding design, content, interfaces, and purposes. Fitzell reflected on a few possible reasons for the lack of UX in DH, mentioning the lone humanities scholar model as well as the DH attitude of “just wanting to build stuff.” The idea of a single author, sharing his work solely in the final stage, is echoed by Pitti when he states the DH researcher is a project’s “obvious” and perhaps only user (2004). However, Pitti cautions against this model, arguing it “deprives readers of access to the resources and methods used,” and the DH community at large agrees “there is an emerging consensus that one of the great benefits of computers and networks is that they allow us to expose our evidence and our methods to evaluation and use by others” (2004).
Fitzell made several recommendations on integrating usability testing in DH project workflows. Involving or partnering with UX experts on DH projects is ideal; “discount” testing methods are available to those with limited resources. Most importantly, DHers must understand user motivations, goals, frustrations – and UX personas are excellent tools for flushing out these concepts. Reflecting back on the discussion of NYU user types, it is crucial to remember potential users as well as obvious peer and intended users. Gibbs and Owens emphasize this point in their study of tool use by humanities scholars, stating, “the envisioned audience should not only be those trying to use the tool, but those trying to understand what it can do and why it matters” (2012). This is an especially salient point to remember when thinking about ongoing conversations regarding communicating the value of DH work and practice, especially in library contexts. In a response to a conversation about the difficulties of conducting UX testing with developers (due to personal investments in projects), Carolyn commented on encouraging an UX literacy, and the importance of being empathetic to both tool builders and tool users.
Lastly, Will Dean presented on the digital humanities, linked data project, “Hidden Worlds: Masking Gender in Science Fiction,” which collected data on female-identified science fiction authors who wrote under pseudonyms with the intention of obscuring gender. He talked about the evolution of the project from personal interest, illustrating how digital humanities projects have the same catalysts as similar analog humanities research: deep, critical engagement with texts and their surrounding social and cultural contexts. A strong theoretical framework ensures a project is as much “H” as it is “D.” The data model used for the project was based on the Europeana model, a creator-centric model focused on biographical data; what distinguishes their project is the inclusion of property uniq: gendermask which describes the use of as alias as an act of gender masking. Dean also spoke of the challenges of learning tools and platforms – Python and Drupal – while working and creating with them. He hopes to be able to include some usability testing and evaluation in the project’s future, but offered a realistic picture of a small project’s ability to incorporate those practices within a strict time frame and with limited resources.
References:
Gibbs, Fred and Trevor Owens (2012). “Building Better Digital Humanities Tools: Toward Broader Audiences and User-Centered Designs” Digital Humanities Quarterly 6(2)
Pitti, Daniel (2004). “Designing Sustainable Projects and Publications” in A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, John Unsworth. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/