CREW VRE Release 5 - 2009 May

The CREW system- PowerPoint Web2.0 -

Release 5April 2009

Improved Faceted Searching

Development of a Virtual Research Environment to support Collaborative

Research Events

Meik Poschen, Michael Daw, Rob Procter, Martin Turner, Terry Hanley, Roger Slack, Andy Hall, Mike Jones,

Rebecca Jones, Anja Le Blanc, Emma Place, Nikki Rogers, Andrew Rowley,

Tobias Schiebeck, Damian Steer, Caroline Williams

The CREW Project

Overview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/

Outline

What is CREW? Project, Context & Technical System

Practice and User Engagement Approach, User Groups, Activities

System Demo Future Release and Users


The CREW Team

CREW: one of four funded projects under the JISC Virtual Research Environment (VRE) phase 2 Programme

2 year project: ends March 2009 Overall aim: “Support the

research process” Focus strongly on user

engagement


Project Aim

“The aim of CREW is to develop and deploy user-centred software to support research resources (including audio-visual recordings) that arise from collaborative research events such as conferences, workshops and seminars to be discoverable in context.”


Project Roots

Successor of two JISC VRE phase 1 projects, integrating their functionalities:

Memetic (Meeting Memory Technology Informing Collaboration), University of Manchester, Open University, University of Southampton, University of Edinburgh

Iugo, Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol


Functionalities of the System

CREW provides an environment and support material, with four main features:

1. Recording: Users can record events audio-visually, incorporating presentation slides and similar material, building on Memetic and AG technology.

2. Replaying of the recorded events and choosing the interface layout.3. Annotating and editing: CREW supports the addition of tags during

recordings, e.g. to annotate slides or link to related blog discussions.

4. Searching: The search and browse application will connect and cross-link all the relevant content and metadata in the VRE portal, presenting detailed information.


CREWArchitecture


Unique selling point

CREW’s unique selling point is to be able to record events, have all gathered data fully searchable, be it annotated audio-visual content or other internal or external resources like papers, conference information and researchers’ profiles etc., which are harvested and cross-linked, integrated in a web environment.


User Engagement The VRE programme phase 2 focuses strongly on

user engagement Lesson’s indicated from Iugo and Memetic:

Despite engaging users wherever possible, this engagement was limited to occasional and informal participation in requirement gathering activities and the use of the tools

User needs should be the driver and focus for requirements gathering, development and evaluation, and underpin the whole methodological approach


Approach

The user engagement and user-centred design process in CREW is grounded in the concept of co-realisation (Hartswood et al., 2007), drawing on ethnomethodologically informed workplace studies

Bridging the gap between users and developers Formalising user involvement within the core activities of

the project Active and long-term user participation Being minimally invasive in development and evaluation

techniques, focusing on the user groups’ work practices Creating a shared user-driven design-in-use process


User Groups

Three user groups have been integrated from the proposal phase on and each is also a use case:

Intute: national JISC service providing access to web resources for research to UK higher education institutions (Bristol & Manchester)

Institute of Health Sciences (IHS): promotes health sciences research in Manchester

Manchester scientific visualization research groups (UK Professional SIGGRAPH Chapter & Eurographics UK Chapter): using the AG for seminars and workshops.


User Groups: Integration A very important asset of CREW is to take into

account the different research settings and requirements of the users themselves.

The members of the three user groups are actively and formally participating in the project during its complete lifecycle to help achieve these goals.

Project funds are used to remunerate users for their time and effort in project activities


Engagement activitiesUsers are integrated into the core activities of the project: Users can participate in the monthly project meeting A Project User Management Group (PUMG) has been

set up, meeting bi-monthly Users can contribute to the project website and Wiki (and

BSCW) Two mailing lists are used:

Project mailing list including all users Technical development mailing list including users who want to


User Requirements Gathering

What do users need and how do we find out? So called User Days in the first phase of the project

One day with each user group Introduction what we plan to do (in development) Discussion in focus groups Document findings and feed those back to the users (User

Requirements Report) Challenge: find a path for development recognising the different needs

of different user groups and domains

All User Day Bring together all users on one day and repeat the above process


Supported User Events

Workshop: making good applications to the research for patient benefit programme - September 2007 (Institute of Health Sciences)

Monthly ACM SIGGRAPH Manchester Professional Chapter seminars - end 2007 onwards (Scientific Visualization Groups)

UK Chapter of the Eurographics Association - TP.CG (Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics) Annual Conference - June 2008 (Scientific Visualization Groups)

ESRC Research Methods Festival, Oxford - 30 June to 3 July 2008: Recording of “What is?” sessions (special)

HP Hosted Event: SWIG UK - A Semantic Web Community Event – 11 November 2008

Health Postgraduate Workshop Seminars – 9 December 2008 Major training event/harvesting – 2009 (Intute)


Case Study


50 Research Events over three years: from seminars, to specialist software/hardware roadmaps and tutorials.


Case Study



Challenges for User Engagement

1. Are the activities run in CREW sufficient to provide continuous maximum user engagement?

2. How do the elicited requirements from different use cases translate into design decisions appropriate for all, across disciplinary boundaries and different work practices?

3. Lessons learned on a practical, technical issue


1. Are the activities run in CREW sufficient to provide continuous maximum user engagement?

Successful so far in the first year in collaborating well with highly motivated users

Gaining valuable information about user needs and their work practice

Regular participation of user representatives in all project meetings

Project team gets frequent feedback on the respective activities of the project

Idea of last requirements session was brought in by the user groups

Maximum user engagement means staying flexible and responsive to users’ advice, whenever possible


2. How do the elicited requirements from different use cases translate into design decisions appropriate for all, across

disciplinary boundaries and different work practices?

Found a lot of common requirements.. ..but also some rather specific ones The success of their integration will be

determined by users’ feedback and finding a compromise

Access rights and confidential data issues Different metadata schemes and categories

Definition of terms and common vocabulary is needed


3. Lesson learned on a practical, technical issue

Recorded by CREW on location in a lecture room it turned out, that microphone and projector’s light bulb were defective, resulting in substandard sound and picture quality. These circumstances affected the user feedback slightly to the negative, although it was made clear, that this was no fault of the CREW software itself.


CREW in Action

CREW – if you have an Access Grid node


CREW in Action

CREW-Kit – Without an Access Grid node


CREW in Action

Overview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/Initial Screen – allowing searches and browsing of recorded/annotated events

Overview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/Selecting an Event – lists all sessions within the event plus event metadata

Overview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/Selecting a Session – individual recorded parts are listed and described

Overview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/Selecting a Recording – allows automatic cross-selection and post annotations

Overview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/Playing a Recording – starts Flash integrated ppt and videos with slide notes …

Overview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/Playing a Recording – … and automated annotation timelines. All selectable.

Overview Slides April 2009 http://www.crew-vre.net/Search and Browsing – in this case authors and presenters, over many events.Extra items included Google Mash-ups for location checking.


Live Demo


Software Outcome: Caboto An RDF-based annotation

system. Provides a RESTfulinterface

for submittingand receiving annotations.

Allows Public and Private annotations.

A work in progress!

CIP


Caboto in CREWand STARS

http://caboto.org

http://caboto.org/


User Requests – new needs

Security Model – VOs, authentication (eg NGS) etc.

IP Performance Rights Issues: Personalisation Permissions

Server “Hardening” – Repository IntegrationInstitutional Repository and SUEDirect links

Speed – Performance Test:Load Testing and Evaluation

Full Interface – skin – rewrite (c word)


Further Steps Ongoing cycles of requirements gathering Supported user events will continue, testing the

software releases in use in the user groups’ workplace settings

Further gathering of user feedback through surveys and/or interviews after release 3 and 4

Usability testing sessions will be conducted with the next releases


Thank You

From the CREW team:

http://www.crew-vre.net

CREW VRE Release 5 - 2009 May

Technology

Transcript of CREW VRE Release 5 - 2009 May