The key that unlocks geeky goodness

The key that unlocks geeky goodness

This is a quick pointer to three posts about some usability work I did for the

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-funded

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project, and a reflection on the process.  Pelagios aims to 'help introduce Linked Open Data goodness into online resources that refer to places in the Ancient World'. The project has already done lots of great work with the various partners to bring lots of different data sources together, but they wanted to find out whether the various visualisations (particularly the graph explorer) let users discover the full potential of the linked data sets.



I posted on the project blog about how I worked out a testing plan to encourage user-centred design and set up the usability sessions in

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, set out how a test session runs (with sample scripts and tasks) in

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and finally I posted some early

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. The results are from a very small sample of potential users but they were consistent in the issues and positive results uncovered.



The wider lesson for LOD-LAM (linked open data in library, archives, museums) projects is that user testing (and/or a strong user-centred design process) helps general audiences (including subject specialists) appreciate the full potential of a technically-led project -&nbsp;without thoughtful design, the results of all those hours of code may go unloved by the people they were written for.&nbsp;In other words, user experience design is the key that unlocks the geeky goodness that drives these projects. It's old news, but the joy of user testing is that it reminds you of what's really important...<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='

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