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IWMW 2009Hands-on prototyping for

(meta)data structuresEmma Tonkin

Talat Chaudhri Alexey Strelnikov

Introduction: metadata

What is it, why, and who cares?Actually covers quite a lot of things: Terminologies (taxonomies, controlled

vocabularies) Vocabularies Data structures/models (entity-relationship

models, conceptual models)

Example For example:

'Event Metadata' excerpt

Event Type: WorkshopWorkshop LocationWorkshop TypeWorkshop Date (ISO 8601/W3CDTF)Opinion of Workshop {Boring, Interesting...}

Eliciting information from users People have many different opinions, and

are capable of believing a lot of mutually contradictory ideas! :-)

Classification systems or data structures (hopefully) represent a consensus or at least a compromise

They therefore improve as we learn more about opinion

They also exist (and are useful) within a given context of use – for a given purpose

Organisation...

Needs context! And exists for a purpose! Clean sock drawers are very nice, but

don't necessarily achieve anything unless you wear socks :)

Prototyping techniques

Scope what we're trying to achieve! Learning about data structures Building quick easy models Finding easy ways to test them

Free-listing 'Name all the x's you know'

eg. What types of image can you think of?

Or - What types of book are there? Or - What features might you use to

describe a book? Or – What sort of resources do

researchers create and publish? You might have your own use cases to

look at!

Free-listing on “workshop metadata”

Peer review status

Date

Times

Duration

Event in which it occurs

Venue

Attendee list

Major trends, topics

Organiser(s)

Remote attendees?

Streamed?

Outputs?

Feedback

Presentations

Papers

Slides

Tutorials

Related articles, links, people

Coffee

Breaks

Networking (who met who)

Networking (wifi!!)

Pitches

Endorsements (SIG, etc)

Other events on similar topic

Other events run by same people...

Research area and findings

Related research activities

Consistency

Build a table: (Note: This is a lot like social tagging!)

Compare and contrast your results.Word AppearancesVenue 5

Related research areas 2

Breaktime beverage 1

Card sorting

Once you have some terms, then it's time to figure out how they fit together

This is especially easy to do with taxonomies

supports interface design by grouping functions/menus/etc,

Supports development of conceptual models

Card Sorting: Method1) Make sure you have something to sort (using for

example the approach described earlier)

2) Bribe/trap some 'users' into agreeing to take part (note 'user' means 'the sort of person you are trying to write a system for')

3) After explaining the rules ('we're not testing you... just learning about the area') ask them to sort the cards into logical groupings

May be 'open' (users can create novel groupings or categories) or 'closed' (users must use predefined groupings)

Using the results!

Another table can be built from these results:

Which categories were created? How frequently were they used (how

many users applied them?)Term/Category

Bird Nature Manmade Food Buildings

Seagull | ||

Lighthouse | |

Fish & Chips

||

Evaluating an information structure (eg

classification/taxonomy) Scenario-based evaluation:

1) Get existing classification2) Develop some scenarios for which it

can be used3) See if it is possible to step through the

data structure in order to successfully complete a scenario

Example: Card sorting

Final comments

A user level view of things is probably simplified (and so it should be!)

What the user sees does not have to be what you store...

What the developer sees probably does – good documentation helps to encourage uptake of data structures/metadata.

Test early, test often. Card is cheaper than code!