JISC Content Conference 2009
Brian Kelly gave a 20 minute talk on "How Do We Deliver Our Innovation?" in a session on "Creating Innovative Interfaces for Cultural Web Sites" at the JISC Content Conference 2009 held from 13:45-15:15 on 30th June 2009.
About The Conference
The conference on 30th June - 1st July 2009 at the Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel. The conference will be held in the context of the completion of Phase 2 of the JISC's Digitisation Programme and will look at the issues facing the UK's universities as they deal with creating, delivering, sustaining and using a whole range of digital content. The conference will gather key players from both the UK and beyond to debate, discuss and decide the next steps that need to be taken to ensure the sustained integration of digitised content into research and education.
Abstract
Interfaces for delivering scholarly and cultural heritage material are not always as engaging as they should be. Alastair Dunning of JISC and Brian Kelly of UKOLN look as some of the issues why.
Alastair Dunning will investigate some of the innovations in developing front ends for digitised content, highlighting areas of best practice. This talk will explore common issues in design and usability, the types of search and visualisation tools implemented, and the ease or difficulty with which such practices and tools can be exported to other websites.
Brian Kelly will argue that the approaches to the development of networked services over the past decade, which have focussed on best practices by the service provided have resulted in an approach which has failed to deliver the user-focussed and engaging services which users now expect.
The danger with an approach which focuses on the development approaches (based on guidelines for standards, open source software solutions, long term preservation and sustainability, project management, etc.) is that there is a failure to engage in services which users want and a failure to take risks. Such concerns are now becoming more apparent as uses of services provided by the commercial sector challenges the assumptions which have been made across the public sector.
This talk will outline some of the benefits which have been provided by organisations which are willing to challenge orthodox thinking. The talk will lead into an open discussion on ways forward.
Biographical Details
Brian Kelly is 'UK Web Focus' at UKOLN. This post is responsible for advising UKOLN's communities (the higher and further education community together with the cultural heritage sector) on best practices for exploiting the potential of the Web.
Brian has been involved in Web activities since he helped to establish a Web service at the University of Leeds in January 1993 - probably the first institutional Web service in the UK.
Brian has worked at UKOLN since 1996. Since then he has given many talks and published a number of peer-reviewed papers covering various aspects of the Web.
Materials
- Slides
- [MS PowerPoint] - [HTML]
Discussion Session
Following the talks by Brian Kelly and Alastair Dunning there will be a breakout session in which participants (30-40 expected) will discuss various issues related to the opening talks.
In the breakout sessions participants will be asked to act as 'Critical Friends' in exploring the following issues:
- 1. Hosting of services
In higher educational institutions services have traditional been hosted within the institution. But it is now possible to deliver user services from 'The Cloud'. A range of possibilities are available including out-sourcing storage and computational power (e.g. Amazon S3 and EC2 through to use of third party applications.
Exercise 1.1: Outline the reasons why you should host your service in a traditional way.
Exercise 1.2: Outline reasons for out-sourcing the hosting of your service.
Exercise 1.3: Critique the arguments provided in 1.1 and 1.2.
Exercise 1.4: Describe the approaches which should be taken in providing an answer to this scenario in specific cases.
- 2. Use of Social Networking Environments
There is increasing interest in the ways in which social networking services can be used to enable users to engage with the content and the communities who have shared interests in the content.
Exercise 2.1: Outline the reasons why you should make use of Social Networking services (e.g. Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Ning, ...) to provide user engagement with your content.
Exercise 2.2: Outline reasons for either not providing such a service at all or developing the social networking service in-house.
Exercise 2.3: Critique the arguments provided in 2.1 and 2.2.
Exercise 2.4: Describe the approaches which should be taken in providing an answer to this scenario in specific cases.
- 3. Innovative Technologies
We are increasingly coming across innovative ways of delivering services. But what new challenges does this provide and how do we respond to the challenges?
Exercise 3.1: Outline some specific examples of innovation which you have encountered which may bring benefits for your service or organisation.
Exercise 3.2: Outline concerns you may have in the deployment of such innovations.
Exercise 3.3: Critique the concerns you have described2.
Exercise 3.4: Describe the approaches which should be taken in providing an answer to this scenario in specific cases.
- 4. Embedding Usability
We may be seeing a diverse range of approaches being taken to usability across the range of innovative services. But what new challenges does this provide and how do we respond to the challenges?
Exercise 4.1: Outline some specific examples of innovative interfaces which you have encountered which may bring benefits for your service or organisation.
Exercise 4.2: Outline concerns you may have in the use of such innovative interfaces.
Exercise 4.3: Critique the concerns you have described2.
Exercise 4.4: Describe the approaches which should be taken in providing an answer to this scenario in specific cases.