Howard Besser UCLA School of Education & Information newliteracies.gseis.ucla/

1. Adaptive System Design:Repurposing Museum Content for different User GroupsUCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies Howard Besser UCLA School of Education & Information http://www.newliteracies.gseis.ucla.edu/ http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/

2. Adaptive System Design:Repurposing Museum Content for different User Groups- • History, underlying problem/issue • MOAC • UCLA/CDL Approach using Adaptive Systems • Repurposing Other Content

3. History, underlying problem/issue • Different ways in which we treat info for internal management vs. visitor access-

4. Besser, Howard (1997). The Transformation of the Museum and the way it’s Perceived, in Katherine Jones-Garmil (ed.), The Wired Museum, Washington: American Association of Museums, pages 153-169

5. Museum Online Archive of California (MOAC) • Difficulty of “merging” records from very different museums • Leverage external standards and software/processing development • Adoption of EAD and Finding Aid approach • Examples & Limitations from MOAC sites-

6. Examples & Limitationsfrom MOAC sites-

14. “John Sutter” (no results); “Sutter” (ambiguous results)

17. UCLA/Pacbell Approach: Adaptive Systems • Profiles for particular user groups (4th grade students, 12th graders, teachers, historians) • Different user interface, navigation, and vocabulary for each user group • Only some groups will see the full Finding Aid structure, but all will see brief context

18. UCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies • The User • Summit • Policy • Design Issues & Adaptive Systems • The Problem and Issues-

19. 21st Century Literacies • Information Literacy • Visual Literacy • Media Literacy • Cultural Literacy • ...

20. The Problem and Issues • If we solve Access Problem (technology, bandwidth, training), other impediments to an informed citizenry still remain • Need critical evaluation of resources (reliability, authoritativeness, thoroughness, recency) • Need skills to pare down from information overload • Need critical thinking skills • Need to deal with different users having different backgrounds and capabilities

21. Design Issues • Examine factors that inhibit efficient and effective use of an information system • Examine how best to design systems to match the literacy levels, technological capabilities, and other characteristics of the user • Principles, Practices, and Guidelines for Good Design for Facilitating Access (screen design, searching & navigation, metadata & description, info structures & organization, usability testing, …) • Build Adaptive Systems

22. Possible Good Design Principles • Don’t disenfranchise users who have slow processors, older browsers, low bandwidth, visual impairment, etc. • Clearly note the recency of any information resource • Make sure that a user can easily determine what organization/agency created or contributed to an information resource

23. Our Resources related toGood Design Principles • Screen Design - The visual design of the screen can impact usability. Color, font, the use of images, and layout of screen elements are essential design components. • Searching and Navigation - Ease of navigation and search/browsing options are critical components of usability. • Metadata and Description - Good metadata and site description will help users find the appropriate website. • Information Structures and Organization - How information is organized and categorized shapes access. For systems with an underlying searchable database, the structure of the database itself will determine the outcome of searches. • Usability Testing - Includes resources on how to evaluate sites and on testing for usability.

24. Build Adaptive Systems • Build Systems that adapt the same back-end information to different user profiles (different knowledge bases, different technical capabilities, different cognitive structures) • User profiles may include advanced researcher in a particular subject area, general undergraduate student, high school student, … • Different profiles will need different user interfaces, navigation, searching vocabulary, file formats and sizes, ...

25. Design • User Interface • Navigation • Browse • Search • Efficient bandwidth use User Profiles Combination of dimensions and purpose • Content • Mark-up • Various metadata • Protection features knowledge base Technological capibilities • Design functional examples • Differing screen arrangements • Differing functional options • Vocabulary mapping • Diminishing image size Age language/culture Dimensions • Purpose • Casual user • K12 student, lifelong learner • Information/hobby • Scholar/preservation • Business • (Colorado Dig Proj) • Cultural tourist • Casual user • Scholar • (CIMI)

26. Adaptive Systemswhat they’ll do • Can serve different audiences (general public, purposeful inquirer [cultural tourist], domain specialist) • Each profile audience will • see a level of discourse addressed to them • experience a user interface appropriate to their profile • use vocabulary they are familiar with • Yet all will be using the same back-end set of information

27. Adaptive Systemshow they’ll work • Passing search terms through a thesaurus to map specialist vocabulary to/from vernacular • Adapting vocabulary from curatorial language into common discourse; development of markup extensions to EAD/CIMI/CIDOC to allow description for different audiences • In general, specialized users will experience more text-based interfaces, while general users will experience more graphic/visual interfaces

28. Adaptive Systemsdevelopment plan • Research and experimentation • Profile several different user communities • Create an additional information delivery system and compare user utility between it and prior system • Demonstrate the utility of this approach (proof of concept) for further research and design

29. Joint CDL/UCLA project • Use OAC/MOAC and/or JARDA (concentrating on images and Finding Aids that include images) • Profile and construct a series of different front-ends for different audiences • Front-ends- • Target Audiences- • Evaluate

30. Profile and construct a series of different front-ends for different audiences:Front-ends to include • Screen design for searching and for display • Browsing, probably with some high-level categorization/grouping • Searching • Possibly vocabulary mapped through thesauri

31. Profile and construct a series of different front-ends for different audiencesTarget audiences might include • 4th grade students • 12th grade students • 4th grade teachers • 12th grade teachers • University faculty • Some people outside the history/social studies sector

32. Adaptive Systems Tentative Timeline • Winter 2002 • Explore literature on interface and searching issues (CO data, CIMI, kids) • Begin working with 12th and 4th grade teachers • Begin discussions with CDL programmers • Spring 2002 • Pre-test various groups with conventional EAD interface • Mock up and begin testing interface screens and searching strategies • Summer 2002 • Preliminary implementation and pre-test • Fall 2002 • Further implementation, full testing, and evaluation

33. What does this all mean forMuseum Professionals? • Feasibility of Adaptive Systems that deliver the same back-end info tailored to different sets of user needs

34. Repurposing Other Content • Content from Howard’s classes-- • http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/repurposing.html

35. Adaptive System Design:Repurposing Museum Content for different User GroupsUCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies Howard Besser UCLA School of Education & Information http://www.newliteracies.gseis.ucla.edu/ http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/repurposing.html Besser, Howard (1997). The Transformation of the Museum and the way it’s Perceived, in Katherine Jones-Garmil (ed.), The Wired Museum, Washington: American Association of Museums, pages 153-169

37. Our Resources Website