Academica: Maryland’s iSchool faculty network

Scott Abromowitz

Academica seeks to ease the process of identifying potential doctorial/master’s advisors for prospective students Also, aids academics/researchers in collaborative research

With a magnitude of information available online and no easy way to curtail relevant from irrelevant information related to professors

Create easily digestible biographies that overcome usability issues of a professor’s website Many are outdated or poorly designed

Focus on visualization - Quickly spot and see where funding is going and what resources the funding is achieved from

What is Academica

Similar Products

VIVO is the most similar to the functionality of Academica, as it strives to create an interface for academic collaboration.

Limited use – People must setup their own profile for optimal use (citations/bibliographic data)

Difference: Does not focus on funding or citation count

VIVO

Offers a basic bio, yet not automatically generated and users can pick and chose what is visible.

The system is lacking in graphic visualization – only shows funding amounts as numbers and not visual (only textual)

Mendeley

Limited to searching and seeing citation count and co-investigators

Must create custom profiles on Google if desire for more personalization

Microsoft automatically generates a profile – but lacks funding information

Microsoft Academic Search & Google Scholar

Visualization of data Focus on funding Visualization

This is difficult to find – Though I purpose a future system that crawls websites for available data

Not one-size fits all approach: It utilizes/incorporates numerous data sources

Why Different?

The Home Screen

Search box

Basic information explaining the purpose of Academica

In designing the home screen, I strive to create an experience that is quick and to the point (no distractions pointing users to different services)

The basic functionality are explained to the user as various points. I would desire a link that connects users to more

information for better clarification in a future iteration.

I chose to place trees in the back of the search button to create an artistic and personal feeling

Friendly and Welcoming

iSchool Faculty Page

Traditional – Alphabetical order BIG pictures – for an easy representation of

the faculty member List of interest

iSchool Faculty Page

iSchool Faculty Page

Faculty Bio Page

Word cloud – automatically generated based on relevant topics in the professor’s research (papers, articles, books, et.)

Photograph generated from content services such as Microsoft Academic Search

Citation – Generated from Microsoft Academic Search

Funding & Grants Page

Graphic depiction of data

Publication Page

Help students better analyze potential advisor’s to see his/her funding and if there is a research fit A student may see the historical view of the professor, yet

over time this perspective/research focus might change Data is automatically generated – No interaction by the

professors (since little incentive to incorporate data) Focus, focus, focus on visualization – Better understand

funding and where it comes from – try to see influence of such funding on professors or their research

Why use Academica?

Please visit: http://abromo.com/blog

DEMO