User Requirements in the Cultural Heritage Domain Jennifer Marlow The University of Sheffield

MultiMatch Design Process Needs Assessment / Task Analysis Low-fidelity Prototype & Evaluation Redesign Interactive Prototype Heuristic Evaluation Design Prototype Evaluate

Requirements Gathering Important aspect of user-centred design Who are the potential users and what are their needs? 3 target groups: Academics CH professionals Tourists

Sources of User Needs Literature and past research Pre-existing sites Log file analysis User studies and interviews Cultural heritage professionals/experts

Literature Review Past work on information/search needs of professionals Focus on relationships

Competitor Analysis Goal: See which functionalities are most common to other CH web sites Which features are standard/optional?

Survey of functionalities (56 CH sites) Free text search 91 % Browse by category 71 % Advanced search 70 % Multilingual 34 % Geographical search 29 % Show “More like this” Timeline / Search by time 25 % Controlled vocabulary 9 % Colour/layout search 7 % Query translation 5 % Faceted browse 3%

Analysis of Log Files Category Site Categorisation of top 100 Queries Named Entities Subject Place Time Art Tate Online 63 36 2 1 General CH WIND 66 24 7 3 Literature Cervantes 73 Photography Alinari 33 29 39 St Andrews 10 25 64 Example Queries: Van Gogh Surrealism Florence Middle Ages

User Studies and Interviews Carried out focus groups and interviews Educational users Video professionals Image professionals Information gained about The tasks that users perform (both typical and challenging) Their multilingual and multimedia requirements Examples of use and suggestions for improvement

Task analysis Reliance on Internet search for everyday work Finding material for presentations/clients, fact-checking details, background research Sources used: Internal and external sites

Search characteristics Reinforced previous findings Names, places, dates, titles, subjects Giotto self-portrait “The Man Midwife” People on strike

Multimedia requirements Text Images Video Audio Percentage of users interacting with media type 100% 87% 47% 7%

Multilingual requirements Significant language barriers serving as block to obtaining information Some reliance on dictionaries to assist in cross-language searching More support required

Multimedia Interaction (video)

Scenarios Will form the basis for tasks presented in user evaluation Cover various user groups Example: CH professional Searching for video footage on Pier Paolo Pasolini, needs to gather background info on who he was Text, Images, Video English, Dutch

Design impacts Prototype 1: Aggregate material Query translation options Enhanced multimedia interaction

Default Interface

Multilingual Search

Multimedia (video search)

Design impact (ctd.) Final prototype: Enhanced aggregation/categorization Enable faceted search/browse; semantic navigation

Future directions User-centred evaluation for the first prototype to gain additional feedback and make sure the system continues to develop in accordance with user needs