Structure and schema

Over the past two days I have been working on the documentation of the structure and schema for the showcase portal. I needed to get it done by the end of the day today since I'll be off next week and the developers need that information.

Schema: 
I defined the facets for the schema, described their inputs, what they will do in the entry interface and in the portal interface. It took some time to write up the descriptions. I had to consider whether or not each element was required, because not all elements will apply to all projects, and how each element would be handled in searches.

Boolean AND and OR make a difference in the advanced search. After considering how the elements work together, I defined the Booleans values thus:

            Selecting multiple facets in an advanced search should search with a Boolean “AND”; results will be returned for projects meeting all search criteria.

            Selecting multiple terms in a single facet in advanced search should search with a Boolean “OR”; results will be returned for projects meeting any of the search criteria.

The logic behind this is that if someone wants to search for a virtual reality (category facet) project in medicine (discipline facet), they want projects that meet both criteria. If someone is searching for projects that are virtual reality or augmented reality (both in the category facet), they want projects that fit either criteria.

Structure:
I also diagrammed the structure of the portal and made wireframes for each of the four page types.

Portal site structure

I had a rough draft of the home page that I was able to update based on the notes and decisions from Monday's meeting. I also wireframed the advanced search, search results and project description pages. I also took a sample project from that spreadsheet of examples and used the information to create a mockup project description page to show what an actual page might look like.

Now that some decisions have been made, I have felt very productive. Wireframes, sitemaps (the structure diagram), the detail of the schema--I was able to get a lot of work done in two days. I submitted the document to the developers this afternoon. Hopefully it contains the information they need to get started. And hopefully they will give me feedback after spring break if there was anything missing or if anything was unclear. 

The point of the internship is to learn and to gain experience. Most of the projects I have done to this point have been theoretical class exercises, so having feedback from actual developers on an actual project will be helpful for my future practice. Did I use correct terminology? Were the diagrams understandable? Did I provide the information they needed? Too much? Too little? Did I miss something? I look forward to hearing back from Dave and Patrick when I get back in to the office.

Movement

Monday morning included a meeting with my supervisor, the group manager, the director, and the two developers. We settled on the facets or types of data we will need for each item in the portal. We agreed to some formats and some of the controlled vocabulary. We have a pretty good idea of what the final product will be like.

The whiteboard.

The facets, the data that will be input with each item, includes a text title and description, plus year, campus, discipline, category (of technology or initiative), people (involved in the project), tags (any pertinent metadata that isn't covered in the other fields), and media (an image to represent the project and a URL to the project page).

At this point, much of the project turns over to the developers. They are researching database needs and a few other odds and ends. I will write up some documentation: description of the schema and the structure of the site. There will be two aspects: the input system and the public facing system.

I need to get documentation to them by the end of Friday before spring break begins. During the week that I am off, hopefully they will be able to get a start on the development side of things. The timing of spring break is actually working out well.

After spring break, I do have a few odds and ends I can work on while the project is in the development phase, but I'm coming to kind of a pause point. Once they have some of the development done, I should be able to begin some UX testing. We'll need to "seed" the new portal, so testing the input system first makes sense (because then we can start entering projects).

I'm not sure how much of the seeding I'll need to do. I can possibly come up with some recommendations for the project pages (the portal won't actually host the projects, just be a portal to access them; staff will have to create project pages on their personal sites).

Takeaway this time: There's an ebb and flow on projects. Working with a team, there are times when you're busy and the project is sitting in your hands, and others might be waiting on you. And then there are times when the project is in someone else's hands and you're waiting for your next steps. Luckily I have some loose ends I can tie up in the meantime (after spring break).