CREW VRE Release 5 - 2009 May

The CREW system - PowerPoint Web2.0 - Release 5 April 2009 Improved Faceted Searching

Development of a Virtual Research Environment to support Collaborative Research Events Meik Poschen, Michael Daw, Rob Procter, Martin Turner, Terry Hanley, Roger Slack, Andy Hall, Mike Jones, Rebecca Jones, Anja Le Blanc, Emma Place, Nikki Rogers, Andrew Rowley, Tobias Schiebeck, Damian Steer, Caroline Williams The CREW Project

Outline
What is CREW?
Project, Context & Technical System
Practice and User Engagement
Approach, User Groups, Activities
System Demo
Future Release and Users

The CREW Team
CREW: one of four funded projects under the JISC Virtual Research Environment (VRE) phase 2 Programme
2 year project: ends March 2009
Overall aim: “Support the research process”
Focus strongly on user engagement

VRE
JISC defines a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) as to
“ help researchers in all disciplines manage the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in carrying out research. A VRE will provide a framework of resources to support the underlying processes of research on both small and large scales, particularly for those disciplines which are not well catered for by the current infrastructure.”

Project Aim
“ The aim of CREW is to develop and deploy user-centred software to support research resources (including audio-visual recordings) that arise from collaborative research events such as conferences, workshops and seminars to be discoverable in context.”

Project Roots
Successor of two JISC VRE phase 1 projects, integrating their functionalities:
Memetic (Meeting Memory Technology Informing Collaboration), University of Manchester, Open University, University of Southampton, University of Edinburgh
Iugo , Institute for Learning and Research Technology (ILRT), University of Bristol

Functionalities of the System
CREW provides an environment and support material, with four main features:
Recording: Users can record events audio-visually, incorporating presentation slides and similar material, building on Memetic and AG technology.
Replaying of the recorded events and choosing the interface layout.
Annotating and editing: CREW supports the addition of tags during recordings, e.g. to annotate slides or link to related blog discussions.
Searching: The search and browse application will connect and cross-link all the relevant content and metadata in the VRE portal, presenting detailed information.

CREW Architecture

Unique selling point
CREW’s unique selling point is to be able to record events , have all gathered data fully searchable , be it annotated audio-visual content or other internal or external resources like papers, conference information and researchers’ profiles etc., which are harvested and cross-linked, integrated in a web environment .

User Engagement
The VRE programme phase 2 focuses strongly on user engagement
Lesson’s indicated from Iugo and Memetic:
Despite engaging users wherever possible, this engagement was limited to occasional and informal participation in requirement gathering activities and the use of the tools
User needs should be the driver and focus for requirements gathering, development and evaluation, and underpin the whole methodological approach

Approach
The user engagement and user-centred design process in CREW is grounded in the concept of co-realisation (Hartswood et al., 2007), drawing on ethnomethodologically informed workplace studies
Bridging the gap between users and developers
Formalising user involvement within the core activities of the project
Active and long-term user participation
Being minimally invasive in development and evaluation techniques, focusing on the user groups’ work practices
Creating a shared user-driven design-in-use process

User Groups
Three user groups have been integrated from the proposal phase on and each is also a use case:
Intute: national JISC service providing access to web resources for research to UK higher education institutions (Bristol & Manchester)
Institute of Health Sciences (IHS): promotes health sciences research in Manchester
Manchester scientific visualization research groups (UK Professional SIGGRAPH Chapter & Eurographics UK Chapter): using the AG for seminars and workshops.

User Groups: Integration
A very important asset of CREW is to take into account the different research settings and requirements of the users themselves.
The members of the three user groups are actively and formally participating in the project during its complete lifecycle to help achieve these goals.
Project funds are used to remunerate users for their time and effort in project activities

Engagement activities
Users are integrated into the core activities of the project:
Users can participate in the monthly project meeting
A Project User Management Group (PUMG) has been set up, meeting bi-monthly
Users can contribute to the project website and Wiki (and BSCW)
Two mailing lists are used:
Project mailing list including all users
Technical development mailing list including users who want to

User Requirements Gathering
What do users need and how do we find out?
So called User Days in the first phase of the project
One day with each user group
Introduction what we plan to do (in development)
Discussion in focus groups
Document findings and feed those back to the users (User Requirements Report)
Challenge: find a path for development recognising the different needs of different user groups and domains
All User Day
Bring together all users on one day and repeat the above process

Supported User Events
Workshop: making good applications to the research for patient benefit programme - September 2007 (Institute of Health Sciences)
Monthly ACM SIGGRAPH Manchester Professional Chapter seminars - end 2007 onwards (Scientific Visualization Groups)
UK Chapter of the Eurographics Association - TP.CG (Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics) Annual Conference - June 2008 (Scientific Visualization Groups)
ESRC Research Methods Festival, Oxford - 30 June to 3 July 2008: Recording of “What is?” sessions (special)
HP Hosted Event: SWIG UK - A Semantic Web Community Event – 11 November 2008
Health Postgraduate Workshop Seminars – 9 December 2008
Major training event/harvesting – 2009 (Intute)

Case Study
50 Research Events over three years: from seminars, to specialist software/hardware roadmaps and tutorials.

Case Study

Challenges for User Engagement
1. Are the activities run in CREW sufficient to provide continuous maximum user engagement?
2. How do the elicited requirements from different use cases translate into design decisions appropriate for all, across disciplinary boundaries and different work practices?
3. Lessons learned on a practical, technical issue

1. Are the activities run in CREW sufficient to provide continuous maximum user engagement?
Successful so far in the first year in collaborating well with highly motivated users
Gaining valuable information about user needs and their work practice
Regular participation of user representatives in all project meetings
Project team gets frequent feedback on the respective activities of the project
Idea of last requirements session was brought in by the user groups
Maximum user engagement means staying flexible and responsive to users’ advice, whenever possible

2. How do the elicited requirements from different use cases translate into design decisions appropriate for all, across disciplinary boundaries and different work practices?
Found a lot of common requirements..
..but also some rather specific ones
The success of their integration will be determined by users’ feedback and finding a compromise
Access rights and confidential data issues
Different metadata schemes and categories
Definition of terms and common vocabulary is needed

3. Lesson learned on a practical, technical issue
Recorded by CREW on location in a lecture room it turned out, that microphone and projector’s light bulb were defective, resulting in substandard sound and picture quality. These circumstances affected the user feedback slightly to the negative, although it was made clear, that this was no fault of the CREW software itself.

CREW in Action
CREW – if you have an Access Grid node

CREW in Action
CREW-Kit – Without an Access Grid node

CREW in Action

Initial Screen – allowing searches and browsing of recorded/annotated events

Selecting an Event – lists all sessions within the event plus event metadata

Selecting a Session – individual recorded parts are listed and described

Selecting a Recording – allows automatic cross-selection and post annotations

Playing a Recording – starts Flash integrated ppt and videos with slide notes …

Playing a Recording – … and automated annotation timelines. All selectable.

Search and Browsing – in this case authors and presenters, over many events. Extra items included Google Mash-ups for location checking.

Live Demo

Software Outcome: Caboto
An RDF-based annotation system.
Provides a RESTful interface for submitting and receiving annotations.
Allows P u blic and P r ivate annotations.
A work in progress!
CIP

Caboto in CREW and STARS http://caboto.org

User Requests – new needs
Security Model – VOs, authentication (eg NGS) etc.
IP Performance Rights Issues: Personalisation Permissions
Server “Hardening” – Repository Integration Institutional Repository and SUE Direct links
Speed – Performance Test: Load Testing and Evaluation
Full Interface – skin – rewrite (c word)

Further Steps
Ongoing cycles of requirements gathering
Supported user events will continue, testing the software releases in use in the user groups’ workplace settings
Further gathering of user feedback through surveys and/or interviews after release 3 and 4
Usability testing sessions will be conducted with the next releases

Thank You
From the CREW team:
http://www.crew-vre.net

CREW VRE Release 5 - 2009 May

by Martin Turner

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