On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 04:50:22PM +1200, Andrea Schweer wrote: > On 08/04/11 16:26, Vibhaj Rajan wrote: > > However, as asked by you about the problems faced by end-users, I > > feel that modern technology like Semantic Web, Metadata, etc > > together with technical abstractions like Community, Collection, etc > > from DSpace technology are too much visible to the end-user now at > > the UI level. This makes it less comfortable for the end-user to > > interact with DSpace instance. > > I would like to see much more concrete descriptions of issues here, but > compiling a list of these can be part of the project.
Seconded. > > I agree that these abstractions are quite required for using DSpace > > instance effectively, but a proposed solution would be to use a > > layer of abstraction at the UI level to make the Digital Content > > Management more user friendly thereby also separating DSpace specific > > and Semantic Web specific things from the end-user. > > I think that a project to improve usability needs to start from the > user's point of view -- what are the problems? Why are these > problematic? Only once these are firmly established (and I don't think > they are yet -- this needs to be part of the project), and once we have > an idea for how to address these problems, can we start to think about > architectural changes that may be necessary. As your description stands > right now, I believe you should justify more clearly why you're > proposing exactly these changes and how they will directly improve the > submitter's experience. And we also need to understand how users cluster. In my experience, making something "user friendly" often only makes it friendly toward casual users who are unaccustomed to thinking deeply about what it is they are doing. The same measures that make a product friendly toward casual users typically make it distinctly unfriendly if not downright rude toward power users. Truly "user friendly" software treats all types of users the way they would be treated. Metadata, scoping, etc. are the reason we chose DSpace rather than some general-purpose CMS. If we need to offer the user a choice of simplified and full-power UIs then so be it, but if what you really want is Drupal then use Drupal. DSpace exists to capture the possibly very rich set of linkages between a document and the overall body of knowledge, not just the document. If we are still talking about submission, well, submission is configurable, and you can leave out a lot of the questions if your users just don't know that much about the documents they submit. You can even tune the forms differently for each collection, if your groups of submitters have different levels of knowledge or need to capture different sets of information. -- Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer mw...@iupui.edu Asking whether markets are efficient is like asking whether people are smart.
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