Hydra UX call - 5 March 2015

On the call:

  • Patricia Hswe (host), Penn State
  • Mark Notess (presenter), Indiana University
  • Cynthia Ramlo, Indiana University
  • Audrey Altman, Digital Public Library
  • Chris Awre, University of Hull
  • John Bell, Dartmouth University
  • John Kratz, California Digital Library
  • Melissa, Cornell University

Agenda and Notes

DISCUSSION: Sharing what we are currently working on to encourage common UX solutions

Patricia: working on creating a way to integrate Zotero in to Scholar's Sphere it can be possible to push things between services. Hoping to share design with the group in May. 

Mark: Working on structural metadata for Avalon. It is an interesting design problem with balancing the many elements, such as the video player, embed codes, purls, descriptive metadata and then adding structural metadata to all of that. How to develop a design that makes appropriate use of the space on desktop as well as mobile. 

Patricia: We are also working on figuring out how to display metadata without using too much space on the page. 

John B: Looking at graphical ways to build out faceting interfaces already handled in the Hydra head. It is an area of investigation to find ways to use graphics to create context in an arc of investigation. 

Patricia: Is anyone working on UX issues surrounding depositing large datasets? Penn State is very interested in this. 

John K: That is very much what we are working on in CDL. Work is in preliminary stage and they are interested in both ingest and discovery. 

PRESENTATION: Facet Label Wrapping--in Blacklight, across browsers, and in Avalon

Mark, presented how changes to Blacklight disrupted Avalon's facet labeling. Examining the problem of how we know when our technology dependencies will break the user interface. There have been many instances of how dependencies have disrupted the Avalon user experience. 

Future Topics

Patricia: Expressed interest in a discussion of how UX people at various institutions work with developers and development teams on Hydra projects. What is the role of the UX Librarian?

How are our institutions testing? How can it be streamlined? How many people does it involve?

Also suggested were accessibility best practices. For the 2.0 release of Scholar's Sphere the developers were provided accessibility training. This practice saved development time. 

Next call

The next call will be on Thursday April 2nd.  Ideas are always welcome for future topics.