Taking application profiles to the people!

We’ve recently started trying out various methodologies for testing whether the different bits of application profiles work for the people trying to use those resources. The main thing to remember is that the approach must not be too technical: anybody ought to be able to understand what the metadata terms and the relationships between digital objects on the web are trying to achieve. This is hands-on metadata for real people!

So we’ve been to various meetings lately. The first one is perhaps the least relevant from most people’s point of view, the Metadata Registries Meeting at the Novotel Centre, York, 23-24 July 2009. We were seeking feedback and discussion of our methodology, as well as talking about a few technical possibilities, which was a useful thing to do. You may ask, what are registries? Well they aren’t the subject of this blog, but in brief they are places that allow people to share their metadata schemas, application profiles and so on, as well as to find tools to help them develop, build and maintain them over time. Remember that application profiles are living structures that should change as the metadata needs of your users in dealing with the resources that you provide change over time. We (UKOLN) operate a registry called IEMSR.

So what did we do for the people?! Well, first of all we went to the Institutional Web Managers Workshop 2009 (IWMW), 28-30 July 2009 because we felt that they are people who are focussed on making services work for users. It may have been an advantage in some ways that they weren’t by and large repository-related people and could look on things from a fresh perspective. It’s always good to get a range of different approaches: after all, won’t the users come to a repository, VRE, VLE or other service with a whole range of points of view and things they want to do? You can see a slightly ad hoc and only mildly embarrassing interview with me, Talat Chaudhri of UKOLN, explaining in about 20 seconds of profound unreadiness over coffee what it is that application profiles (should) do. (Why on earth did the kind editor choose that particular first frame to stop the video?!) Not a bad attempt, given the lack of coffee, I hope you may agree.

Talat Chaudhri from iwmw on Vimeo.

What we did was to get people to think about resources, and reasons why users would want to be looking at them. We played with post-it notes (also called stick-it notes elsewhere?) that had metadata terms written on them, and arranged them in logical groups that would help a person who was trying to perform focussed searches for resources. Any resource type will do: for instance, we tested it out before the session on “beach life: what you might find on a beach and what you might want to know about it”. It doesn’t even have to be sensible! In real life application profiles, however, you obviously need to think of the whole range of things that people will want to do with your resource. The best way: ask them! Don’t engineer things that people won’t want to use. The extra complexity creates the very real danger of making your structures difficult to search, which will put off the very users that are supposed to be using the service.

This method is called card sorting, and is quite well known. It does have some limitations, but we have already shown its usefulness in focussing attention on what users need to do. One limitation, for instance, is that it’s rather hard not to prejudice the process from the beginning. If you ask the participants to think of the scenarios that users might search for resources first, then participants will come with pre-ordained ideas that will tend to undermine the fresh analysis of user requirements that we are looking for. On the other hand, if you don’t let them know until they have already thought of the terms that they need to describe the resource, on the first try they will tend to organise them in ways that don’t work with the scenarios. Let us remember, though, that this is just the first iteration of a development cycle for metadata solutions. You need to take every new version back to the users and check that it does what they need it to.

A second limitation is that paper prototyping can’t produce the complex cross-links that you’d find in a real database. A third one is that it doesn’t begin to touch the importance of interface design to usability testing of metadata terms and structures. You may (or may not) need a complex data structure. However, your user should only see what they need to see in order to accomplish what they want. Anything else will actually hinder their use of the service, be it a web page or a repository deposit interface. That complexity can be generated behind the scenes by software, so that users are asked understandable, intuitive and above all useful questions that facilitate their end user experience. We’re also working on these areas.

We then went to the Repositories Fringe 2009 in Edinburgh, 30-31 July 2009. (You will see from the above dates that this was a bit of a marathon!) The session was broadcast live on the Web, and I hope that the recording will be made available before long. I will add a link here if/when that happens. Having learnt a little from the above session, we did more of the same. We learnt a lot about how to get user requirements, and even more about how not to do it!

We were asked if we were running a focus group. If people want application profiles like SWAP, IAP, GAP, TBMAP and so on to be implemented, we will certainly have to consult focus groups, but we will tell people when that is what we’re doing. First, however, we are trying to raise discussion about how we can analyse user requirements on an ongoing basis and transmit that hard evidence to developers, so that will have a reason to go to the trouble of incorporating it into their software releases. At present, we can’t show them sufficient evidence that these APs do what they are intended for, which is why repository software developers in particular have been understandably agnostic about APs. But the other thing that is crucial is to engage service providers and users. Why do they want to come? If they don’t get something out of the event that will improve their service or their knowledge, preferably both, they won’t come. This was as much an outreach and training event as a focus group.

We’re hoping that this is a good start towards an iterative, user-driven method for analysing existing APs for various purposes, as well as for designing new APs from scratch. We’re confident that it’s going well at the moment and that we are beginning to get answers. But the task of making your metadata fit the service that you provide is ongoing, because services also change over time. It’s best not to be too prescriptive, as different institutional or web services take different approaches to achieving the same things. We are aiming at a flexible, iterative, toolkit approach that works for as many people as possible, and offers a range of tools to implement relevant parts of an overall solution that work for the services and users concerned.

Lastly, the fact that we are reviewing APs should not be taken as a criticism of the ones that we have, even if deficiencies are found that need to be rectified, or new approaches taken. The work that was done in creating them has laid the groundwork for this new activity, which is aimed precisely at making the results of that work more useful in the community of web services that they were intended for. Change should be welcomed because needs and requirements change, along with our understanding of how best to analyse them.