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Emma Bayne. Discovery: Enhancing search experience through interface design. The National Archives. Why we are changing our online catalogue?. Challenges. Volume of Catalogue and digitised data increasing 11 Million Catalogue Entries = 500,000,000 “facts” (about 45 facts per entry)
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Emma Bayne Discovery: Enhancing search experience through interface design
Challenges • Volume of Catalogue and digitised data increasing • 11 Million Catalogue Entries = 500,000,000 “facts” (about 45 facts per entry) • Another 7.7 Million documents in Documents Online (digitised content) • Plus other sources • Ever increasing digitisation of our collection • Increasing prevalence of born-digital records • Currently hold 1TB of born digital records; estimate total will be13.5TB by 2016 • Specific large collections like Olympics 2012, estimate at 20TB on it's own • Cultural change • Moving from paper model to digital model • Still taking paper records for many years • Increasing capability to present large volumes of digital content • New challenges around search, find and browse
Challenges • Volume and location of Users • Over 50,000 unique visits online a day • Users from all around the world • For every physical document produced onsite (totalling over 600,000) over 220 documents were downloaded • Juggling priorities • Champion and follow archival standards • Excellent user experience • Enabling user generated content • Quality data is key! • Highly varied data gathered over hundreds of years • Lack of continuity; many exceptions • Gloucester – glos; glouc; gloster; gloucs…
What is our aim? • Simple - focus on the users and on the Record • Create effective and enjoyable user interface through understanding who are customers are • Tasks • Expectations • Capabilities • Limitations • Preferences • Context of use
How? • Involve users from the outset and throughout the development process • Use of range of methods • Interviews • Diary studies • Workshops • Focus groups • Log analysis • User testing
How? • Customers have widely differing needs with varied levels of expertise and motivation, such as: • Seasoned archivist who can navigate expertly through our archival holdings • Retired grandmother who has no archival or subject knowledge • No average customer so doesn’t make sense to design for one Persona based design • Design for a small group of user types who represent a wider audience • Fictional characters based on actual observed behaviour • Composite of qualitative research
The Future • Continue to add to Discovery, improving as we go keeping users as the core focus as we move forward… • Continued iterative development and enhancements: • Responsive design • Data enhancements • More user generated content • Integrating further datasets • Improving search logic