This document summarizes research done at VRT Medialab to redesign their search tools. It describes: (1) VRT Medialab and its role in research for the Flemish public broadcaster. (2) Contextual inquiry was conducted including observations of 14 people in their daily work to develop 3 personas - the primary media researcher, secondary media researcher, and archivist. (3) Recommendations were made for new search and annotation features based on task analysis and the personas, including faceted search, metadata annotation tools, and unified interfaces.

1. Redesigning search
Hendrik Dacquin
VRT Medialab
Pieter Heytens
IBBT v.z.w./CUO

2. VRT-medialab
• Flemish research department (22 engineers)
• Located in Belgium
• Member of International organizations
• EBU (P/SKAIE - PMAG - P/NP - P-HDTV)
• AMWA - SMTPE - W3C - IPTC

3. First Wave of VRT-medialab

10. Cutomizable!

16. Help! it’s made by developers

17. antiquity
• Autocompletion
• Auto-saving
• Spell checker
• Screen personalization
• Filtering tools
• Wiki-style growth
• Rough cut editor

19. shot segmentation

20. face detection

24. it’s not always about
metadata!

25. it’s about the users

26. Contextual Inquiry
• observations in naturally occurring context
• daily routine tasks
• 14 people
• 8 researchers
• 6 archivists
information
3 personas task analysis
architecture

27. 3 persona’s

29. 1. the primary media
researcher
• Sporadically uses the
search tool
• Has extended deadlines,
interrupted by long
periods of other work

30. The primary media researcher
Observations
• Hardly uses the thesaurus
- Searches by keyword
• Scans hundreds of clips
• Manually maintains
spreadsheet of found
clips
• Analogue Previews

32. 2. the secondary media
researcher

33. The secondary media
researcher
• Creative, experienced
program maker
• Tight deadlines
• Daily usage

34. The secondary media researcher
Observations
• Hardly uses the
thesaurus
• Free textual associations
& creative filters
• Makes a mental
semantic map
• Misses ability to add
metadata and clip
ratings

36. 3. the archivist

37. the archivist
Observations
• uses two browser windows
• time annotation is done in
a free form field
• annotating persons is
limited to the persons
known by the archivist
• uses Word to prepare her
annotation
• updates a spreadsheet
when finished

39. information
3 personas task analysis
architecture

40. the researcher tasks
1. collects and analyzes search results
2. makes edits and a final selection
3. checks out, gathering the selected material.
This flow of activities is very strict.
There is no room for shortcuts in this procedure.

42. the archivist tasks
• to watch
• analyze
• add time-based metadata to media.
All these tasks are done sequentially.

43. information
3 personas task analysis
t architecture

44. Recommendations for search
• Single sign-on for both appliances
• Faceted search capabilities
• Search keyword visualizations
• Thumbnail preview of the media
• The possibility to rate the media
• Search keyword highlighting

45. Recommendations for search
• Sharing of the cluster of results with colleagues.
• Clear navigation possibilities and pagination
• Information about the intrinsic quality of the media
• Reuse detection and presentation
• The possibility to store all selected media clips in a bin
or basket and the possibility to simply checkout and
collect all selected material on a tape or as a digital
asset
• Possibility to add metadata to the archived content

46. Recommendations for
annotation
• Thesaurus keywords suggestion tool
• Auto-completion of thesaurus keywords in respective
fields
• Easier and standardized time-based metadata annotation.
• A simple spell check tool
• Auto-save of the work to a draft version
• A unified layout between the Basis+ search application
and annotation tool
• Possibility to enlarge the font-size

48. conclusions
(1) we engaged the users from day 1
(2) More than 50 new features
(3) More than 60 enhancements