Methodology

Presentation

The planning phase for this project involved compiling information about the current Texas Legacy website from a number of sources, including, but not limited to: the content on the current website itself (Texas Legacy), David Todd, our main contact - in effect our client, and Quinn Stewart, who has worked closely with Todd. We also reviewed other websites of a similar nature taking into consideration their own strengths and weaknesses (NOAA EPIC, Fortunoff Video Archive, NASA HEASARC).

We have numerous design constraints to take into consideration. Most of these are at the request of our client. He has requested that we make very little use of Javascript because many targeted users will be on dial-up modems rather than broadband connections. This mandates the use of HTML code only and severely limits the graphical capabilities of a website that makes sense visually and graphically more than textually. Todd envisions a site with the global navigation bar on the left (i.e. vertical). It has also been requested that we use the current logo on the website. This was a little problematic because the logo is a map of the state of Texas and is similar to the graphic we plan to use as our primary means of browsing (using a clickable map of Texas). We are also concerned about the use of media in formats (such as MS Word and Real Player) to which some users do not have easy access. Todd will be maintaining the website himself so we must make the site easily updatable.

In addition to the main website design, Todd has requested that we develop a splash page featuring a slideshow with photos of narrators, wildlife, landscape, etc. It will most likely employ Javascript or possibly even Flash. If we have time to make this page (it is low-priority), we will not make it the default page. In order to achieve Todd's goal of "putting people first," we elected to include a slide show that displays still photos of narrators and landscapes. This served the dual purpose of presenting the narrators' images and establishing the purpose of the site (i.e., to present videos).

Our analysis of this project centered on five specific areas:
- Determining potential users of the site.
- Critiquing the current design and content.
- Deciding on the best presentation scheme for gigabytes of content to users (and accommodation for future content innovation).
- Examine which functions should be database-driven.
- Establish elements to include on the home page.

We developed user scenarios for three user sets, school-age children, contemporaries of the interviewees, and environmentalists. Developing effective navigation and content for these three main groups is a daunting task as each brings different technology and skill sets to the site. However, we were able to determine the primary function of the site is educational in scope.

Perhaps the most challenging task was the analysis of the current content in terms of organizing it into an easily manageable whole. The website hosts over 400 hours of video of nearly 130 different interviewees from across the state of Texas. The existing Texas Legacy site primarily serves as a placeholder for the future site, as the bulk of the content is only accessible to authorized users.

Because of this, we were unable to determine much from the current design. However, there were several themes present in the initial design that we found helpful in the course of our work. Both the environmental history timeline and the people involved with the project were presented as important in the initial design as a means of "getting to know" the site. We explored using the timeline as a navigational metaphor, but decided that focusing on the specific narrators was more appropriate. We chose to treat the media as a property of its narrator, and to use the narrators themselves for organizational purposes. This enabled us to group the narrators by topic and region, and to present the specific video clips on narrator pages. Our analysis of the different types of media involved supported this decision. Since all browsing will eventually lead to a narrator page (from which video is available), presenting options for viewing the interview in several formats on the narrator page leaves audio/video/caption decisions to the user's discretion before viewing each file.

One of our biggest conceptual problems in analyzing the content of the Texas Legacy project was determining the way in which users would want to approach the content. We were provided with indexes of the long interviews, but with no way of presenting specific clips (at index points) for any of the interviews. There were, however, roughly 30 video files excerpted from the longer videos available for streaming and download. As it is unlikely that the majority of visitors to the site would be interested in watching many full length interviews, we decided to work with the excerpts. Organizing the site by the particular excerpts of media serves the additional purpose of preparing the site's architecture for serving up chunks of the longer indexed videos on demand (a stated long-term goal of the project).

While representing a rich index and footage log for the interview tapes, the original database was of little use in managing the excerpts. For this reason, we decided to assemble our own database aligned to our organizational scheme.

On the initial Texas Legacy site, the home page served to explain the project, but as access was limited, did little to engage the user. Since our design needed to make the content available for the user for the first time, we decided to focus on the narrators. We also felt the home page should inform users what to expect on the site, as well as help to get them started. We decided include redundant links in the body of the homepage with more descriptive labels than their counterparts in the navigation bar and to include a graphic to allow users a glimpse into what the actual video files look like.

Design [Back to top]

We opted for the classic vertical navigation bar located on the left side of the browser window. As noted above, a clickable map of Texas regions (of which there are seven) serves as our main browsing tool (although we have allowed for other means, such as the region, narrator, and topic index pages). When a user clicks on a region they are transported to a page with a list of narrators from that region. Included in this list of narrators will be a brief description of the narrator, the topic(s) of discussion, their region, and their hometown. In the interests of easy maintenance, we have decided that the individual narrator pages will be database-driven. This will allow Todd to enter the appropriate content into the database (including video, pictures, text, etc.) without having to develop any actual webpages himself. In addition, this eliminates the need for us to create 35 (or even 130) separate narrator pages. Furthermore, the database will allow users to search (instead of browse) by region, topic, and narrator, as well as by the content of each narrator's biography. And last, there will be a “Conservation History Timeline” page, an “About Texas Legacy” page that contains information about Todd and other contributors, and a “How You Can Help” page soliciting participation from all individuals. Some of our original mock-ups: 

Home: Design1 | Design 2 | Design 3 | Design 4 (obituary style)

Narrator: Design 1 | Design 2

Region: Design 1 | Design 2

Indices: Design

Verification [Back to top]

The verification process involved feedback from Todd on our approaches to organization, design, taxonomies, labeling, etc. Working with someone who has such intimate knowledge of the site's content is something of a double-edged sword. While Todd provided valuable feedback, it was important to remember that his views of the content do not necessarily reflect the views of the general population of users or good IA principles. In fact, when establishing names for the various regions of the state, we found it necessary to overrule some of his suggestions. For example, he preferred the more scientifically accurate term "Trans-Pecos" for the West Texas region more commonly known as "Big Bend". In this case, his knowledge was too extensive and actually transcended that of who we determined the "average" user to be. His preference was for more than seven regions, although the group decided that that level of granularity was unnecessary and would, in fact, confuse the site's users. In the end, we settled on the following regional categories: Big Bend, Gulf Coast, Hill Country, Lakes and Prairies, Panhandle, Pineywoods, and Rio Grande Valley.

A more difficult undertaking was the establishment of keywords for the topic index. The combination of keyword card sorting and Todd's input allowed us to establish several main subject categories (Arts, Development, Energy, Land, Law & Politics, Miscellaneous, Narrators, Plants, Science, Sites, Waste, and Wildlife) that were then broken out into keywords.

With the understanding that this new version of the Texas Legacy site will be administered by an individual who did not participate in its design, we find ourselves faced with two distinct usability issues. First, the site must be usable to those looking for information about Texas conservation. Second, the database and data entry procedures must be usable by the site's administrator(s). If new video files cannot be quickly and easily added to the existing site, then we have failed in that aspect of the site's design. Usability is not always about front-end design; often the back-end must be considered, as well. It's apparent, of course, that someone whose role it is to update and maintain the site is likely to be more technically proficient than the average user. That person will likely be more inclined to sit down and study the site in order to find out the best way to maintain it. But the point is that we should strive for intuitiveness in the back-end, just as we do in the front-end.

In order to verify our success in both front-end and back-end design, we would ideally run two sets of usability tests. A basic test for front-end users would involve a number of simple tasks, such as finding video clips about a certain topic or finding the video clip of a specific narrator. The user might also be asked to find a list of all narrators associated with a particular region or city. Back-end usability might include asking the user (site administrator) to add a new narrator and the accompanying information to the site's database. Due to time constraints we were only able to conduct a Heuristic assessment of our work.

After working closely with a site and its content, it's easy to lose perspective and objectivity. This fact helps to underscore the importance of doing usability testing. Often, designers have become so close to a project that obvious errors or omissions aren't obvious at all.

Lacking a true user audience, we often found ourselves making decisions in a more-or-less democratic style. Developing and administering usability tests will help determine the validity of our decisions.

Construction [Back to top]

Individual components we constructed:

- Image map of Texas Regions for browsing
- Navigation bar
- Template
- Database Content
- Descriptive imagery on home page (javascript for real player slideshow)
- CSS
- Site map
- Texas Legacy Demo

Maintenance [Back to top]

Because our client will be maintaining the website, we have focused making content addition and the generation of new web pages as easy as possible.

We have used plain HTML code for the majority of the site, except for the index page and narrator page. The little Javascript we did use for the slide show on the index page can be updated without altering the code.

Since there are over 100 narrators in this project, manually maintaining and generating pages is difficult. For this reason, the individual narrator pages are database-driven, making maintenance much easier. The information about the narrators and associated audio and video files was input into the database and the pages themselves are dynamically generated by a php file. Additionally, we will use a data entry form (example from UT faculty page) to allow people who have no database knowledge to enter the appropriate content (including biography, audio, video, pictures, topics, etc.) without knowing the specifics of the database and without developing any actual web pages themselves.

We have also applied a Cascading Style Sheet to our website to keep the page layout consistent, further simplifying maintenance. When new pages are added to the website, Todd can take advantage of our CSS and will not have to worry about text attributes.

Our initial access to the database was delayed for nearly a month. When we finally gained access to the database, we found that it was riddled with bugs and basically unusable. For this reason, we elected to build our own database. The framework for this database is in place.

We are afraid naïve users may not understand the media choices. We should perhaps have an explanatory section such as that found at www.broadcast.noaa.gov/getstart.html

Advanced search capability was an option which we intially planned to include in the functionality of the website, but the issue was never resolved. The search page should include instruction for good searching technique. Additionally, a search results page needs to be developed that provides helpful feedback when no hits are found.

Some improvements we would include in retrospect:
-Redesign the timeline to make it more interactive and useful
-Use video stills for all narrator portraits because the originals are of poor quality
-Synonym rings for searching the database (regions, topics)
-How does one delete files from the database?
-Usability testing
-Develop splash page as per David Todd's request
-Linking the database's search capabilities with fully indexed video chunks