We presented our prototypes to the Discovery and Access (D&A) user representatives to get their feedback and suggestions regarding which features might be useful to incorporate into the catalog. We gave two separate presentations to the group, the first one being in April 2021 and the second one in August 2021.
In the first presentation, we demonstrated the prototype demonstrating the following features: the addition of information to the author knowledge panels; the addition of subject knowledge panels; the inclusion of additional biographical information for authors as well as an influence graph and a publication timeline; and the inclusion of a map, timeline view, and call number browse link for subject heading. The author and subject pages had different layouts but both included links to or portions of related library search results.
In the second presentation, we were able to share additional examples and ideas including:
- Examples of pages demonstrating how the pages would handle situations where there was little or no external data
- Examples showing the same layout for authors and subject pages. Our original prototype used a different layout for authors and subjects so we wanted to provide additional choices to the user representatives using consistent design across the author and subject pages.
On the request of the user representatives, we set up a demo to allow them to interact with the prototype. This page provides greater detail on the feedback we received from the user representatives after they had a chance to review the prototype. In summary, in addition to pointing out some technical issues and providing suggestions for adding more interactivity to some of the visualizations, the user representatives expressed reservations around bringing in external data they considered “arbitrary and unbalanced”. The representatives gave more positive feedback for the biographical information displayed for authors. After reviewing this feedback, the DASH! Team concluded that, although the technical issues could be addressed, we should focus on including the data that seemed least problematic.
Based on their feedback, we made revisions to the prototype and included content and connections which had been well received by the user representatives. Tim Worrall and Huda Khan then worked on the code that could be considered for the production catalog. During the subsequent development sprint for D&A, the user representatives were able to see the updates and interact with the demo server. With the green light afforded by the user representatives, Tim Worrall and the D&A group worked on pushing this code to production. This page explains the content that is currently in production.
