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Usability in Digital Humanities - Evaluating User Interfaces, Infrastructural Components and the Use of Mobile Devices During Research Process

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9819))

Abstract

The usability of tools and services that form a digital research infrastructure is a key asset for their acceptance among researchers. When applied to infrastructures, the concept of usability needs to be extended to other aspects such as the interoperability between several infrastructure components. In this paper, we present the results of several usability studies. Our aim was not only to test the usability of single tools but also to assess the extent to which different tools and devices can be seamlessly integrated into a single digital research workflow. Our findings suggest that more resources need be spent on testing of digital tools and infrastructure components and that it is especially important to conduct user tests covering the whole knowledge process.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://de.dariah.eu/.

  2. 2.

    http://dariah.eu/.

  3. 3.

    This paper is a translated, shortened and adapted version of a DARIAH-DE deliverable [10].

  4. 4.

    See an updated list at: https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/ben/goldenrules.html and in [12].

  5. 5.

    A technique developed by Sears [11] combining heuristic evaluations, cognitive walkthroughs und usability walkthroughs and belonging to test with experts.

  6. 6.

    LAUDATIO project, http://www.laudatio-repository.org/laudatio/

  7. 7.

    The DARIAH-DE Publish-GUI will be accessible via https://de.dariah.eu/repository. Currently it is still in a beta status and not available publicly.

  8. 8.

    http://www.laudatio-repository.org/repository/.

  9. 9.

    http://steinheim-institut.de/cgi-bin/epidat.

  10. 10.

    https://www.mpdl.mpg.de/.

  11. 11.

    https://github.com/imeji-community/imejiLab.

  12. 12.

    http://app-juedische-orte.de.dariah.eu/?ilanguage=EN.

  13. 13.

    http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/tgn/.

  14. 14.

    See: http://app-juedische-orte.de.dariah.eu/q?vpage=datenquellen.

  15. 15.

    For more information see http://labcam.mpdl.mpg.de/ - the LabCam App captures images or videos and transfers them to a repository based on the imeji software (http://imeji.org).

  16. 16.

    https://de.dariah.eu/geobrowser.

  17. 17.

    The Hyperwall is an installation of 4x4 K Monitors to show images and videos with high resolutions. It is located at the Max Planck Digital Library in Munich.

  18. 18.

    See: http://digilib.sourceforge.net/.

  19. 19.

    https://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/.

References

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Correspondence to Natasa Bulatovic .

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Bulatovic, N., Gnadt, T., Romanello, M., Stiller, J., Thoden, K. (2016). Usability in Digital Humanities - Evaluating User Interfaces, Infrastructural Components and the Use of Mobile Devices During Research Process. In: Fuhr, N., Kovács, L., Risse, T., Nejdl, W. (eds) Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries. TPDL 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9819. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43997-6_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43997-6_26

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