communicating context: the power of digital interfaces jeanne kramer-smyth university of maryland,...

Communicating Context:

The Power of Digital Interfaces

Jeanne Kramer-Smyth

University of Maryland, College Park

Spellbound Blog

What are we going to talk about? Interface Design Examples of interfaces What can YOU do to support preservation

of context and original order in the interfaces being built in your organization?

Assumptions You are not software developers Focus on digitized collections

Top Priorities for Interface Design

Simple ClearConsistentSupport hunt for more information

My favorite book on interface design!

Building Blocks Communicate contextual Information Support navigation among related records Provide useful Search Results Preserve the relationships among individual

records through careful planning

Contextual Information Five Ws (who, what, when, where & why) Historical and Biographical Information Finding Aid Institution Information

Context Example

Single Record with Context

Multiple Records with Context

Search ResultsMany Paths to the

Same Record

Interface Evaluation Checklist Five Ws (who, what, when, where & why) Finding Aid Institution Information Rights information Finding related records Support for many paths to records Useful search results

Final Thoughts Preserving some level of context is easier

than preserving original order There are lots of amazing approaches

being tried Good web design will go a long way

towards preserving context Educate your web designers about Archival

Concepts

Contact Info & Questions

Jeanne Kramer-Smyth

http://www.SpellboundBlog.com

jeanne@spellboundblog.com

This presentation will be available online on the Spellbound Blog site after the conference.