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IWMW 2009

Hands-on prototyping for (meta)data structures

Emma TonkinTalat Chaudhri

Alexey Strelnikov

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

Introduction: metadataWhat 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)

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

Example For example:

'Event Metadata' excerptEvent Type: Workshop

Workshop Location

Workshop Type

Workshop Date (ISO 8601/W3CDTF)

Opinion of Workshop {Boring, Interesting...}

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

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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

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

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Organisation...

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

don't necessarily achieve anything for those who don’t wear socks :)

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

Prototyping techniques

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

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

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!

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

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

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

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Consistency

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

Compare and contrast your results.Word Appearances

Venue 5

Related research areas 2

Breaktime beverage 1

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

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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

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

Card Sorting: Method

1) 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)

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

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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 1 2

Lighthouse 1 1

Fish & Chips

2

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

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Evaluating an information structure

Scenario-based evaluation:1) Get existing classification

2) Develop some scenarios for which it can be used

3) See if it is possible to step through the data structure in order to successfully complete a scenario

Example: Card sorting

                                                             

A centre of expertise in digital information management

www.ukoln.ac.uk

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!