"Me Too!" Data

In his monthly coulmn 'Technically Speaking' (February 2007, American Libraries), Andrew Pace wrote:

“The lines between desktop and intranet, and extranet and internet, continue to blur…will libraries continue to be the hotspot for…finding?”

I hope so too, but it also appears that, to paraphrase Andrew, the lines between library and extranet and intranet continue to blur. As a result, the library may stop being a destination for discovery of particular physical items, as it blends into what is becoming an infinite, homogeneous body of bits (the haystack-sorry for using that again..:-).

Yet, a side effect to the development of search engines is a new situation where information WANTS to be found and the competition over screen real estate and ranking is getting sophisticated and fierce.

This, in my opinion, represents a real danger for making true discovery possible in the future. And here, I think is also the opportunity for the transformation of librarians and library science – guiding the development of search and discovery tools in a way that will make original discovery possible.

First posted on: Thursday, March 08, 2007

Complications When Out Of Context

It was this time in the transatlantic flight: I finished most of the food on the tray, breaking my promise to myself to avoid airline food... The little piece of cheese I actually hate, smiled at me from under the organized mess of plastic containers, carefully refolded napkins (to save space, don't you know...) and food leftovers. The temptation was hard to resist, the promising red glow of Cellophane under which hiding a soft yellow cheese I hoped to like this time!

In front of me set an older genteman whoes face I could not see, and I noriced, through the tiny space between the seats, that he was intensely reviewing his sophisticated looking soft cheese token.

I instantly lost interest in my cheese and focused on him and his cheese, trying to predict next steps. Clearly, I thought, this person does not fly often. Perhaps even, this is his first flight! So to him, everything is new, sophisticated looking and even frightening.

After a little while the man unwrapped the cellophane, but little did he know how complicated life can be: He was now turning between his fingers a round red piece of something. He turned it left, and right, up and down for a few long seconds.

Finally he just took a bit into the wax and immediately put the thing on his tray. I could not see his expression.

OK - So he did not figure out that in odrer to get to the cheese, one is supposed to pull on a string that's embedded in the layer of red wax, peel the wax and undress the hidden treasure - the soft yellow cheese. It is a bit of culinary striptease at 40K high in the sky, and I can not get this instance out of my mind, especially when thinking about interaction models and task design...

User's possible thought process:

1. What is this food? He assumes it IS food: Well...it was part of the meal, no ?!


2. Ask a fellow traveler? - perhaps too embarrassed, shy or mute.


3. Experiment! -- try out -- how bad can it be?! The risk is low.

Perhaps, complex, unfamiliar settings (being on an airplane for the first time + contact with unfamiliar food item) ignite some instinctive over-thinking that tends to lead to unexpected results. This is different then regular exploration, where the user IS in a mode of expecting the unexpected.Or, perhaps the person actually liked eating his cheese with the wax, but upon taking the first bite, decided to stick with his promise not to eat airline food...

Seek and You Shall Find

The faster a user can transition from typing a query into a search field to typing a number in a credit card field, the happier are both user (customer) and business.

Not surprisingly, “Seek and you shall find” has been the catchphrase of successful search engine vendors. This maxim encapsulates the main thrust of successful interaction within the commercial domain: task A (seek) directly leads to outcome B (find). This interaction model is vectorial—its directionality is governed by the wish to achieve the optimal outcome.

Based on the vectorial interaction model, successful commercial search engines eliminate the vast landscape of the Web by providing patrons with a 'relevant' result set, quickly — on the first results screen and often in the top record. The fact that these search engines simultaneously provide an entirely unusable result-set of hundreds of thousands of records further emphasizes the underlying goal of providing the single relevant match for the search.

Given a result-set of workable dimensions (e.g. 25 links), the user would have been likely to explore it, but the paradoxical combination of results presented by the commercial search engines does not offer the user real choices. Rather, it conditions the user to view the action of searching and its outcome as inseparable, providing an instantly gratifying experience packaged as a volitional choice process.

Different from the “Seek and you shall find” vectorial model, is a model of user-collection interaction characterized by the phrase “Seek so you can find”. Here, the relationship between task A (seek) and task B (find) is more reciprocal and dynamic. It suggests a spiral interaction model in which the outcome emerges as a synthesis enabled by the search process. Whereas the vectorial interaction model works well for commercial search engines, I believe that the spiral interaction model is more appropriate for the academic and scholarly domains.

Commercial search engines help users find a needle in a haystack—and this has never been easier. Google’s ability is amazing even to those who understand its underlying technology. Nonetheless, finding a needle in a haystack (vectorial model) is not, in fact, such a big deal when you have the right equipment—a magnet in the case of this analogy. Only the needle attaches to the magnet while the haystack becomes immaterial.

Most research and academic electronic collections, on the other hand, are serving patrons who are interested in finding a piece of hay in the haystack (spiral model). The magnet becomes useless; the key functions of assigning relevancy and ranking of information become dependent on human capacities such as critical evaluation, synthesis, and decision making.


First posed on: Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Memory Palace Interface

In his book The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci(1), Jonathan Spence describes a memory system devised by a 16th century Italian Jesuit priest. Matteo Ricci’s goal was to find a way to store in one’s head the sum of all human knowledge, so he suggested the following idea: Depending on how much one wants to remember, one can build in one’s head virtual urban centers of various sizes. These imaginary cities should be complete with fully furnished palaces, homes, public meeting places and so on.

Each one of these imagined spaces would serve as a memory location to reference a piece of knowledge. It would be possible “to walk” through this vast mental construct to access this or other item or bit of information. Five centuries later, I find Matteo Ricci’s idea fantastically intriguing and completely relevant rich knowledge applications and UXD.

First posted: Wednesday, September 06, 2006

The Iceberg Problem

For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong
H. L. Mencken

Overview
A collection is a potential, a discovery waiting to happen. Since digital collections are only accessible through their user interfaces, the role of the user interface as a facilitator of discovery cannot be underestimated.

It appears, however, that while academic electronic collections have grown exponentially—and often as a result of significant institutional investment, the utilization rates for many of these collections remain lower than expected. Computers and broadband networks are ubiquitous, patrons are computer savvy, and researchers are excited about the potential of electronic resources--what then stands in the way of greater utilization of electronic scholarly collections?

Driven by substantial industry investment, significant advances in e-commerce over the last few years dramatically changed users’ expectations for usability and quick gratification during online sessions. Many institutional libraries, on the other hand, are facing shrinking budgets and diminishing resources just as the raising popularity of commercial research tools makes the success of academic collections increasingly contingent on enabling quick and easy access to the wealth of resources they offer. For collection developers, this situation suggests the need to take a closer look at the user interfaces that provide access to their collections.

Icebergs and Penguins

Icebergs are a good metaphor for the relationship between collections and the user interface. Like icebergs, most collections are largely invisible. The user interface, or the tip of the iceberg, does not reflect the actual scope or depth of the submerged mass. Some collection portals attempt to attract patrons by using gimmicky interface designs intended to create a contemporary look—these are the penguins of our metaphor.

Still, server log analyses, used like the underwater equipment necessary to explore the submerged mass, often reveal that only a small chunk of the collection is ever used. Analyses of inter-library loan requests support the frustrating realization that patrons remain unaware of much of the content available in the collection.

The iceberg problem can be framed as follows: What can be done to facilitate interaction patterns that help patrons realize the discovery potential of the available electronic resources and, by extension, justify current and future investment in the collection? I believe that the answer is in the user interface.

In what follows, I would like further to explore the conceptual and strategic relationship between the user interface and collection utilization. Utilization, along with usability and accessibility, are no longer the obscure jargon of narrowly technical discussions. Increasingly these terms permeate the electronic resources discourse. Yet the topics they represent often remain only loosely connected to the efforts of many collection developers.

This is understandable given the traditional separation between content and containers, or the collection and the technology that makes it available. Organizational structures often reflect and reinforce the boundaries between content and technology, making it difficult to establish effective communication between decision makers on both sides.

The resulting disconnect between the visible and submerged parts of the collection “iceberg” can lead, not only to decreased utilization, but also and more problematically, to an inversion in the relationship between collection development and improved usability and accessibility. Connecting Tip to BaseCollection developers often conceptualize the value of their collection for patrons in terms of quality and scope.

From this perspective, the collection development process tends to focus on uniqueness and growth. To achieve uniqueness, collection developers use their domain expertise to guide the direction of further investment in subscriptions and other electronic resources with the intention of creating collections that are unique in quality and strength. Growth is related to richness and wealth of content concentration—two central factors in making any collection authoritative and influential in its particular domain.

The centrality of growth (whether highly focused, widely inclusive, or both) as a means to increase the appeal of the collection is further highlighted by the unprecedented availability of new content and an apparently matching increase in demand. Uniqueness and growth are inherent in the mission of collections and constitute key motivators for collection developers. Yet despite being key attributes of collection development, uniqueness and growth become problematic when considered from the perspective of the delivery and consumption medium for electronic collections—the Web.

To explain this point, I will first examine the role of growth using the concept of “zero sum gains”, which I borrow from economics. Zero sum gains means that in some circumstances, the value of continued investment can diminish to the point of becoming meaningless. With billions of pages indexed on various search engines, the Web is a medium to which the concept of zero sum gains clearly applies—especially from the perspective of the end-user.

Growth is meaningful only if the end-user realizes that an increasingly large number of resources is available in the collection. Consequently, it is quite possible to invest in the growth of a collection without attaining a comparable expansion of its utilization.Uniqueness too is a complicated construct given the pace at which competing alternatives emerge on the Web. The co-modification of information on the web inevitably implies susceptibility to high substitution rates.

In other words, the cost of switching from one website to another is minimal to the end-user. To understand how the low cost of switching affects the relationship between uniqueness, investment and utilization, let us contrast electronic collections with brick and mortar ones. In traditional museums or special libraries, we can see uniqueness in action.

For example, the availability of a Vermeer masterpiece in a certain museum makes that institution a unique destination for Vermeer fans and scholars. Yet the availability of a digital impression of the same Vermeer masterpiece in numerous digital collections does not make any of them a unique destination.

On the contrary, each of these collections runs the risk of becoming interchangeable with all the others. I am not suggesting that considerations of utilization, accessibility, and usability displace uniqueness and growth as guiding concepts and motivating principles in the process of collection development.

Rather I would like to integrate the two perspectives represented by these concepts. Much like the two differently positioned but nonetheless inseparable parts of the iceberg, a scholarly electronic collection and its user interface constitute a single entity. In the remainder of this article I will consider how we can implement an integrative framework—one that can facilitate a dynamic interaction between the development of content and user interface—in the discourse on electronic collections.

I propose that we begin with a closer look at the patron, or the user in the user interface construct. ConclusionIcebergs dissolve overtime--their size diminishes until they finally melt away--and so will the iceberg problem discussed here. Collections will become highly visible through the implementation of user interfaces that would be developed with industry standards and metadata protocols.

These interfaces will support interaction models that fit the unique requirements of their patrons for knowledge synthesis through interactive and accessible direct manipulation.

Oy-Way Pointers

I Parked the car in a multi-level garage, close to a sign with several attributes of my spot: 'Level 3', 'Orange' and 'Aisle B'.

That should be enough for mental note taking, but I worried that it is likely I'll forget the attributes immediately unless I repeat the mantra '3-b-orange' several times. And also... is there a 'level 3, aisle B, Red' or a 'level 3, aisle B, Blue' etc?

I use the camera in my mobile phone to take a spot-snapshot. Weeks, months after I've parked in that garage, I have evidence, an artifact, of being there: A place of no importance, no flag left behind...Yet documented.Another example: I found the last parking space next to a coffee shop. After inserting the first quarter, the meter did not respond. Being one of those meters that control 2 spots, 'Left' and 'Right', I tried another coin because I was not sure if I paid attention to the correct slot. But there was not response, so I gave up, and upon my return to the car, a ticket waited on the windshield.

It is unlikely I'll have to use this photo as evidence, but I do have a 'documentation' of the broken meter. A pointer to an otherwise erasable event. I ended up sending a letter to the parking office, and the ticket was voided. I did not use the image as evidence, but it is posted here. Years from now, perhaps long after this particular meter is pulled out of commission, its image will still litter snapshots of internet files. Is this consumable content?

On Federated Search UI

It's a very ancient saying,
But a true and honest thought,
That if you become a teacher,
By your pupils you'll be taught.(1)

The daunting task of finding a needle in a haystack has never been easier. Or, so it appears. The web and in turn Google, Yahoo and other search engines (to which I will refer as Yogles) liberated a previously untapped human desire to locate obscure bits of information for personal consumption. Suddenly, millions of people are researching not only best airfare, pet rocks, organically correct coffee beans and lovers, but also complex medical conditions, dietary supplements or the secret life of Barbie and Ken. And the amazing thing is… this stuff can be found!!!

An activity that used to be limited to academic and research settings and required years of training and specialized knowledge is now reduced to the phrase “Google it!” This is probably good for Human Kind, but if you are developing sophisticated federated (or meta) search software you are in trouble. While scientific search still requires expertise to navigate the exponentially growing sea of knowledge, users increasingly demand the task to be as simple as Yogle makes it appear.

The user interface problem for the developers of federated search tools can be described using the agricultural haystack metaphor. Finding a needle in a haystack can be easy if you are equipped with the right tool, say a powerful magnet. This is what happens with Yogles--the magnets. MetaSearch tools try help with a more complicated task. It involves searching for a particular piece of hay in the haystack; clearly, a magnet is not as effective. Here, we face a challenge of a higher magnitude.

Developers spend a great deal of effort and imagination on creating fantastic search engines. But these, like all engines are buried under the hood, and most of the work done by the tool is transparent to the user with the exception of speed. The users, on the other hand, care little about HOW the search is done, and more about WHAT is found. The Yogle user interface underscores this gap: a single search field is very easy to use but the results often include thousands of records, and there are absolutely no organizing tools to manage a retrieved set or past results.

The rational for this minimalist approach to the user interface may be that a particular engine can be so good that what you are looking for would be displayed on the first screen and even in the first line. The problem is that the information displayed on the first page or line is often based on what OTHERS were looking for. In other words, it is easier to search for a coin under the light post, but what if the coin you are after is on page 75,233 out of 270,008?

By becoming a de facto standard for searching, Yogle’s user interface inflicts users with high expectations for ease of use and satisfaction in accomplishing a search task, even if the search task they need to perform is as remote in complexity and scope from the common search as an Amoeba is remote from Humans. Moreover, while the starting point of the search process has been popularized and has now become familiar to millions, we still lack widely accepted interaction patterns for organization and management of large sets of retrieved data.

In order to build a successful user interface for a federated search tool, developers would benefit from understanding the mental models that users create in order to deal with the entire search process. The process of profiling users--building use-case libraries that describe user types, scenarios of use, goals, workflows and outcomes--is common to software development. The problem with modeling for federated search UI is that many of the users themselves lack a clear mental model of what search, retrieval and analysis mean! In fact, a wide majority of users may not know what a federated search means.

Most software applications enable users to perform familiar tasks. As such, software represents the next level in the evolutionary ladder of productivity. For example, the word processor replaced the typewriter, and both advanced letter writing from the use of the pen, pencil, and feather. The introduction of e-Mail further reduced delivery speed and made the use of paper optional. Despite all these changes, the task itself--communicating in writing has changed little since its inception. Users are able to perform with software familiar tasks that have predictable outcomes. When the user’s perception of the task is closely replicated in the user interface, the application is perceived to be intuitive.

For most users, however, meta searching electronic data is not a familiar task. Users have to negotiate a lot of new technical information, such as terminology, scope of search (where are we searching), the impact of logic (AND, OR, NOT) on the result set, how ranking is determined and so on. Further, the absence of established workflows and interaction metaphors complicates mapping federated search activities.

The Yogle search engines excel in mapping to a common search structure. They work well when we know what we are looking for, but just don’t know where to find it. The challenge – and yes – the opportunity for developers of meta search tools is to come up with a successful user interface metaphor that encompasses the complete discovery process and reflects a wide range of user skills and expertise in searching for knowledge. The user interface of federated search tools requires a revolutionary rather than an evolutionary change, and it can only be achieved through collaboration among developers, librarians, patrons, and other stakeholders. We may even consider changing the name for this class of software to “MetaDiscovery Tools” to project a notion of a complete process that covers the search-retrieve-analyze-manage cycle.

Footnotes
1) From the soundtrack lyrics for ‘Getting to know you’ in the movie ‘The King and I’

Note to the reader: This is a reprint of my talk at ALA summer 2004, Orlando, LITA Pre conference Friday, June 25, 2004 Usability Issues in MetaSearch Interface Design

Interface This!

Imagine interfacing with an expensive keyboard that has dozens keys, most white, some black and none labeled. Each key performs a different function and numerous key combinations are possible. It takes years of long daily practice to become proficient and instructions are written in special code that requires years of real-time decoding expertise. Finally, this keyboard is a real pain to fit on the seat tray of an aircraft even in first class.

Welcome the piano user interface. In fact, we are surrounded by funky interfaces in our homes, workplaces, cars--mostly facing the challenges they present without much objection. (On this topic, I highly recommend Donald Norman's insightful book "The Design of Everyday Things", about the psychology of interfacing with common objects, i.e. doors, faucets etc.) But why is it that users seem to accept challenges such as the piano interface, which has not changed for centuries, while developers are compelled to work on improvements to the user interface of software?

Any software that has been around for several years has to accommodate substantial increase in functionality introduced by creative development and customers needs. Eventually, the interface itself may reach a saturation point that renders evolutionary changes to the design obsolete, and requires revolutionary approach.

Think of it as a house that was originally built for a young family. The kids have all grown and have families of their own, but they insist on staying in the house. Rooms and sections are added where possible to accommodate all residents, and everyone is happy. There comes a time, however, when providing newcomers to the family with a map and some written instructions to help locate the kitchen doesn't cut it anymore. Other solutions are required.

Unlike architecture, the design of software user interface has a short history and it involves only two common interaction types: The Command Line Interface (CLI) facilitated by the keyboard, and the Graphical User Interface (GUI), facilitated mostly by direct manipulation of objects on the screen.

CLI places significant burdens on the user's memory. It requires storage and retrieval of the application's functions dictionary. As a result, a novice user may require a long period of internalization but can gain substantial increase in operation speed over time. The GUI provides the novice user with instant access to most major functions through direct manipulation of objects such as menus and buttons. However, requirements for eye-hand coordination are high and operation is relatively slow because the user needs to locate functions on the screen, then move, point and click the mouse in order to operate the system.

These actions cannot be optimized significantly over time. Moreover, in a desktop environment, the large muscles of the hand are required to perform very delicate and precise motions for which they are not designed. Holding a mouse and staring at the screen for long periods of time, and the need to switch frequently between keyboard and mouse, result in discomfort and even potential injuries to the user. GUI may be dangerous to your health...

ATM machines are a good example for the successful implementation of GUI: These devices support a small set of secure workflows, each with predictable outcome. Interaction time is short and a touch screen affords genuine direct manipulation. Users are prompted with relevant feedback such as "You have no funds in your account" and can cancel an operation before it is executed. Finally, the chances to get a receipt for cash withdrawal but no actual money are very small.

In contrast, Expert Systems complicate the lives of interface designers and their users. Only a fraction of functionality can be displayed any given time, limited by factors such as screen size, network bandwidth, server load and visual load. Additionally, and most importantly, many of the tasks and workflows are not trivial. They require knowledge both of the task and of how the system affords the task--two items that often do not correlate. The software can perform a particular task, but the user interface does not offer an easy way to get to it. Increase in functionality reduces the effectiveness of graphical interface and increases the load on short and long-term working memory. Training and retention are a real issue as well as standardization of workflows across an organization. Most Expert Systems have a high learning curve that is closely linked to the limitations of the user interface in bridging the expert user with the expert system.

We have a long way to go before Microsoft Windows and other computing de-facto standards change to facilitate transparent correlation between work-related tasks and system functionality. Until such developments occur, work with real users is a methodology that can insure successful interfaces.

First posted on: Friday, September 01, 2006

OOPS

Optimism is defined as "The doctrine, asserted by Leibnitz, that this world is the best of all possible worlds." (American Heritage Dictionary (AHD))

Optimum, there, is defined as "The point at which the condition, degree, or amount of something is the most favorable."

Development of user personas as means to model interaction context, is becoming a common UXD practice. Indeed, relativity makes the 'best of all possible worlds', or 'The optimal UI for a particular application', a bit hard to define, unless context is established for user and interaction model.

But what is the difference between a persona and a stereotype?

A persona is contextual. AHD's definition: "The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one's public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self."

Stereotypes reflect a more rigid, non-contextual construct: "A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image." (AHD) One needs to be aware of the danger in mixing persona with stereotype, yet, be aware that good interaction is based on ease of learnability, often gained by consistency and reuse of interaction patterns.

So, a library of personas will make sense. But will the personas become stale and stereotypical?

First posted on: Thursday, August 24, 2006

Sitewrecks

A few years ago, while waiting at Heathrow for a connection flight to the US, I struck a conversation with a Nigerian who was setting up a Malaria foundation. Before he boarded his plane to Lagos, I volunteered to help with the foundation's website.

Over the next couple of months we communicated via email, and the site went up here: http://www.malariafoundation.org/. After that, we lost touch, and as I visit the site from time to time, it is clear that it has not been touched since the launch.This experience is similar to other experiences I had, where there is a great deal of enthusiasm to do good, but it is hard to follow up - both for me and for the organizers, in upkeep and long term maintenance.With little technical and organizational resources, I think there are many thousands of 'Sitewrecks' - websites setup by foundations and nonforprofits - who do not make it through the long voyage of on-going maintenance.

The solution is to set up a grass-root movement, similar to 'OpenSource' that will connect talent from all over the world, with organizations, and help with that. I am talking about a long-term relationship, not just to setup the site. Perhaps such an effort exist already?

First posted on: Monday, August 21, 2006