Texas Legacy Project LIS 385T Information Architecture and Design December 3, 2002 Gilok Choi Chad Hutchens Nadalia Liu Libby Peterek John Stubbe Patrick Williams

Background What is Texas Legacy? Ongoing project Goals Audio page Text section Landscapes Transcripts Ongoing project Goals Educate Create awareness Developing a historical record Garnering support for environmental initiatives

Texas Legacy Project Planning Analysis Design Verification Construction Maintenance

Our Goals Meeting the needs, wants, and desires of our client Accommodating scalability (for additional content and video length concerns) Considering technical limitations of audience Making site accessible to all users Organizing content for intuitive information seeking Indexing/labeling content Reengineering navigation

Our Goals (cont’d) Promoting multiple browsing options Branding Geographical Topical Personal Branding Focusing on video as primary content Developing a clear access point for the materials Providing a “face” for the project

Planning Review site materials Discuss navigation schemes, audience, and current design with David Todd Logo (even though we don’t like it, we have to keep it) Discuss media options with David Todd Word files and HTML for transcripts? Many users will be on dial-up Minimal use of Javascript Need to use lots of pictures of people

Planning (cont’d) Other issues Using unknown narrators as site’s focal point Presenting the goal of the site (promoting Texas conservation) while simultaneously making users aware of the site’s functionality (video presentation) Multiple media!!! Broadband video, dial-up video, broadband video with captioning, dial-up video with captioning, broadband audio, dial-up audio, broadband audio with captioning, dial-up audio with captioning, text only: HTML and Word.

Analysis What do people want to use this site for? Education Entertainment Research Public advocacy Realistic to view 2 hour video? Not unless it’s indexed and easily searched. Especially true for users with slow connections. File size and length (opted for 35 2-minute excerpts).

Analysis (cont’d) Possible to index and excerpt? Not currently. However, the database will eventually serve video chunks How much of the site can be dynamically generated? Pages for narrators with links to media Region and Topic pages Does maintaining the bulk of the data in the database affect search engine results? Need for 2 on-site search engines? Searching site vs. search database. (Very little content within the static pages; majority of content is located in database.)

More Analysis Search vs. Browse? Home page components? Help users use the site Show narrator photos How will users know what to do from the beginning? How to group media, topics, narrators, and keywords? Footage log keywords vs. Uniform topics

Design Useful home page Browsing index Offering options for video, audio, transcript Templates Using the database to populate templates

Verification Pros and cons of using an expert (organization, labels, taxonomies) Regions Topics Card sorting Expert input Excerpts vs. Full-length videos Heuristic evaluation

Construction Site map Image map of Texas for browsing Navigation bar Database content spreadsheet Templates Descriptive imagery on home page (Real Player slideshow)

Maintenance Use of database and db input interface allow for quick and easy maintenance and updating. Use of a Cascading Style Sheet ensures that new content will be consistent.

Post-Mortem If we’d known then…: Establish better content and project management protocols. Use video stills for all narrator portraits because the originals are of inconsistent quality (old vs. new) Usability testing Explanation of streaming media (like NOAA EPIC Getting Started)

Post-Mortem (cont’d) Ideas for the next phase: Redesign the timeline to make it more interactive and useful Synonym rings for searching the database (regions, topics) Develop process for deleting files from the database Link the database's search capabilities with fully indexed video chunks