We’ll be meeting this Friday from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Richard and Mike will be leading this meeting by doing a test run of their project, Patchwork Prototyping a Collections Dashboard. Below is the overview of their project:

http://archimuse.com/mw2009/abstracts/prg_335002112.html

Studies of researchers who use cultural heritage materials suggest that neither collection-level nor item-level metadata sufficiently meets their needs when each stands alone - a problem that is compounded when information is drawn from across libraries, archives and museums into shared aggregations. The IMLS Digital Collections and Content (IMLS DCC) project (http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu) is an aggregation that includes collection-level descriptions and item-level metadata records from digitization projects funded by IMLS National Leadership Grants (NLG) and Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grants to cultural heritage institutions, in addition to recent additions from non-IMLS history-related collections. While the IMLS DCC interfaces loosely connect collection-level descriptions and item-level records through hyperlinks, the current interfaces do not provide users a quick sense of a collection’s contours or the context from which items are drawn.

This demonstration will explore the problem of how to provide users with an immediate low effort understanding of collection/item contexts and relationships through the construction of a “collections dashboard” prototype.

Dashboards have been used in a variety of environments to provide improved access to complex datasets such as financial markets, elections results, or weather patterns. Notably, the Indianapolis Museum of Art adapted the dashboard metaphor to expose information about various museum datapoints, such as number of visitors, works on display, etc. A dashboard that visualizes essential features of collection/item context may be a useful tool for bridging the gap between current collection-level and item-level metadata.

During the demonstration we will invite attendees to engage in a live, hands-on patchwork-prototyping exercise using collection and item metadata from the IMLS DCC in an experimental interface sandbox. Patchwork-prototyping is a rapid-prototyping approach that takes advantage of existing open software systems (e.g. open source software, plug-ins and modules combined with open-APIs and web services, etc.) in order to quickly and iteratively explore a design space. Essentially, patchwork-prototyping uses lightweight mashups to produce proof-of-concept interfaces that can be easily modified and improved - an advantage over both low-fidelity paper prototyping and high-fidelity systems design. These provisional, easily revised prototypes can serve as resources to inform discussions of desirable features, functionalities and interfaces. Rather than the intimidating blank page where designers have to figure out what to build from scratch, multiple prototype ideas encourage innovation through mix and match and creativity through negation and revision: “oh no - I didn’t mean that, I meant…” or “Actually now I look at it I wonder if it might be better to …”. During the demonstration we will test a range of different ideas combined with suggestions from attendees. As such this is not a conventional demonstration of a finished product, but rather a demonstration of a design process that can involve many participants in discussing desirable features, trade-offs, complications and unexpected advantages. A record of the evolving design and participant feedback will be made available online during and after the demonstration in order to extend the conversation.

Our proposal, Mapping the Design Space of Design Education in iSchools, was accepted as a Wildcard Session at the iConference, the (nearly) annual iSchools conference. Wildcards are supposed to be an opportunity to try something new in a conference setting, which is an opportunity we are trying to take full advantage of.

To this end, we have set up some electronic infrastructure to support our planning activities, and hopefully to keep persistent the conversation we hope to begin during the conference. Currently, this infrastructure includes:

• Design Edcuation Wiki
• Design Ed Google Group

Please check it out, sign up for accounts, and feel free to add content and/or send messages. As we update the site, we will occasionally post here with news.

In general, what we are trying to accomplish is to have a brainstorming session where we apply techniques which we have found useful for the other kinds of design activities we engage in, and apply them to the topic of Design Education. We hope that by doing this we will both be able to identify the accent with iSchools bring to design endeavors, as well as ideas for how to teach design more effectively (or at all) in iSchools.

We just submitted a proposal for the iConference to organize a WildCard session about teaching design, design practice, and design thinking in iSchools. A copy of the proposal can be found here