Channels work package introduction at the Europeana Sounds kick-off

WP4 Channels DevelopmentDavid Haskiya 2014-02-17

Table of Contents

• Some Channels work package basics• Why do we develop Channels?• What are Channels?

• Definitions• Examples and benchmarks• Sketches

• How do we develop the Channels?• User-centred design process• More on the how in the separate session!

Work package basics I

• Goal: To design and develop sounds related channels• Task 4.1 User experience research and design

• Starts: M2 (but in reality it just did)• Participants: Europeana, Sound and Vision, Austrian Institute

of Technology• Sub-contracted designers and usability experts, User Advisory

Panel

• First year milestones• M8: Product brief and Development plan• M9: Audio Channels, first prototype (internal only)• M12: Audio Channels, second prototype (alpha)

Work package basics II

• Task 4.2 Channels development• Starts: M6• Participants: Europeana, Sound and Vision,National Technical

University of Athens, Austrian Institute of Technology, Net 7, We Are What We Do

• First year milestones• M8: Prouduct brief and Product plan• M9: Audio Channels, first prototype (internal only)• M12: Audio Channels, second prototype (alpha)

Why do we develop Channels?

John Battelle describes this in his book, The Search:Domain-specific search solutions focus on one area of knowledge, creating customized search experiences, that because of the domain's limited corpus and clear relationships between concepts, provide extremely relevant results for searchers

Primary reason

• For the benefit of our users• Offering the benefits of vertical search

• Optimize user experience by aligning segmented content, content specific features and communities of interest

• Greater precision due to more limited scope• Leverage domain knowledge including vocabularies and

authority files• Support specific and unique tasks

• Other segmentation dimensions possible?• Channels per country or language?• Channels per institution/data provider or even per user?• Orthogonal to Channels per content segment seprate

between modes: standard and expert/researcher modes

Secondary reasons

• For the benefit of Europeana Network partners• A Channels Engine turns transforms the portal to

collaborative publication platform• From provide, publish (and forget?) to create, collaborate and

refine

• To bring economies of scale and improve sustainability of thematic aggregation projects• To use European funding more rationally, sustainably and

taking advantage of the economies of scale by funding a Channels Enginge and Platform rather than multiple thematic standalone portal that all need to ensure sustainability on their own

What is a Channel?

Definition - genericChannels are segmented sub-portals made available on the Europeana platform. Segmentation is based on themes of content and within a Channel the user will search and browse within that theme of content only. User will have access to advanced browse capabilities based on thematically appropriate types, subjects and authorities (creators).

Set-up by the Europeana Office and groups of Network partners in collaboration Channels will be skinned to differentiate them from both the generic portal and other channels and can also offer functionalities specific to the theme of the Channel.

While hosted by Europeana Channels are embeddable in their entirety on other sites.

...and in more detail

• Exploration by browsing and filtering based thematically appropriate vocabularies

• Direct access to full media in the portal• Ability for users to remix, tag and annotate records

and media• User created sets and annotations

• Access to thematically relevant Creator pages and Subject pages

• Access to thematically relevant editorial content (blog, social media feeds) and curated exhibitions

• Other features can be added incrementally • And also be specific per channel, certain featuresonly make

sense dependent on the theme

Only Channel owners content

Channel specific branding and visual design

Branding

Filtered content

BrandingBranding

Statistics

Social

Branding Filtered content

Social User interactions

BrandingSelected content

Group members

Hypothetical definition – The Music Channel

The Music Channel is the first of many Europeana Channels. It's a dedicated area on our portal for professional and non-professional music afficionados alike. On the Channel you can find and access our very best collections of music, sheet music and other music-related content. You can add your own notes and tags to a piece of music and to sheet music, create and share your own playlists and browse our interactive dictionary of music genres, composers and musicians.

The Music Channel is created and maintained by the Europeana Sounds project which includes some of Europe's top music archives. The Channel is available in 30 European languages.

Sketches of a music channel

Branded channel with its own blurb

Thematic metadata games available!?

Channel specific social feeds

Vocabulary& Authority based browse

Vocabulary based facets

Authority enriched results

Playable, taggable, shareable, embeddable audio

User created playlists

Semantically similar objects

Content can be in multiple channels

Higher demands on content

• Should include direct media links or standard compliant players

• Must be classified into consistent types and/or subjects supported by multi-lingual vocabularies

• Must include references to Agents defined by authority files

• Should include Timespan and Named period metadata• Should include geodata (must for ambient sound)• Should contain rich free text descriptions• In short: Channel content should conform to the

highest standards of metadata quality in Europeana

How do we design the channels?

How do we design the channels?

• By using a User Centred Design Methodology• By iterating design-test-protype-test-design-test-

prototype... until our Channels concept is razor sharp (and then continue that cycle throughout the project)• I've given you a number of design hypotheses about Channels

in this presentation. They will be tested. Some of them will not pass the test and be discarded, others will be modified, new hyoptheses will arise.

• We will take help from User Experience and Usability experts, sub-contract resources have been dedicated for this purpose

• The Work Package will be reinforced by contracted external UX and Usability experts

We're kicked-off!

Thank you!Questions? Comments?