Part of the "Introduction to Research Infrastructures" module, available at http://training.parthenos-project.eu/

1. • Theme 1: User
Engagement
ESU Leipzig, 2016
Dr Jennifer Edmond
Trinity College Dublin

2. Changing Paradigms of User
Engagement
 Paternalistic
 User-Centred
Design
 User
Experience
 Participatory
Design

3. PARTHENOS User Requirements
Study 320 page survey of
hundreds of documents
from across the cluster
partners and beyond
 5 themes related to project
work packages
 Data about user
requirements captured
mostly for tool building
 Many other documents
describing project
decisions (but not
underlying evidence)

4. Process of understanding researchers and
refining requirements
1
• User Scenarios
2
• User Stories
3
• Use Case Diagrams
• Requirements
4
• Mock Ups
• Activity Diagrams
5
• Prototypes
• Participatory Design Sessions
• Video Prototypes0
D 8.1
General
functional
description
D 8.2 &
D 8.3
Specific
functional
(visualization)
and
architectural
description
D 4.1
&
D 4.2
Analysis of
implications for
methodology and
research practice
(two workshops
additional as
input)

5. 0a. Participatory Design Sessions
Paris, October 2012: WW1 researchers
Florence, January 2013: Medievalists
Berlin, October 2013: Archivists, Librarians and Information
specialists

6. • Each participant created a prototype demonstrating a certain function such as a search tool or a
visualization feature. Length: 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
• Prototypes from the Paris workshop included:
• Mapping archival networks by location
• Visualizing objects in their physical locatio in the archive
• Visualizing search paths (color-coding results according to frequency of visit)
• Crowdsourcing translation of documents
• Mapping archive location and type (“Geosearch” tool)
• Mapping documents and files spatially and chronologically (“Geotime” visualization tool)
• Exporting an image to a PowerPoint presentation with automatic citation information
• Planning physical travel to multiple archives (“voyager travel agent application”)
 Presentation export tool  Mapping of documents and files
0b. Result of Participatory Design Sessions:
Video Prototypes

7. 1. User Scenarios
„My project examines how the rural-urban divide shaped Habsburg
Austrian society’s experience of the war from about 1915 (when food and
food shortages became increasingly politicized) [...]
I want to answer the following questions: How did the administration and
realities of rationing vary between cities on the one hand, and between
urban centers and the rural areas of their provinces on the other?
In terms of research, I will first need to map the changing structures of
rationing and the incidence of food protests and related disturbances over
the course of the war. [...]
In the event that I locate a particularly rich vein of primary sources [...] I
would be interested in digitizing them and subjecting them to text-mining
analysis. Specifically, I could measure the changing occurrence of terms like
“country” in the discourse of city-dwellers and “city” or “town” (or the
name of a city) in rural discourse. [...] relative occurrence of such terms
against other dividing categories such as the “nation” or “the rich.” [...]”

8. 2. User Stories

9. But wait there‘s more...
• 2 Prototypes
• 3 Summer Schools
• 20+ Transnational Access Fellows
• Trusted User Group
• End phase weekly testing cycles