Versions 1 through 6

When I started working on the field filter, I made a list of all the schools and departments on all eight IU campuses. I then tried to create a "bottom-up" organization system, but I wasn't satisfied with what I came up with.

After five versions based on taking the departments and trying to organize them into established categories like science, social science and humanities, there were still about 15 fields and departments that weren't easy to categorize.

I decided I was going about this the wrong way.

The reason I started from all the departments was to try to make the controlled vocabulary robust, so it could accommodate the fields of future projects. Rather than have an ad hoc system for adding new fields as new projects are added, I want the fields to be ready for use when they are needed.

What occurred to me Thursday was that all those departments are already in schools. 

By starting at the school level, putting comparable schools from each campus together, I was able to create a sixth version of the controlled vocabulary for fields. And I like it. School level is still too broad for some areas (humanities, sciences, social sciences), but most schools are already narrow enough to work well. For the others, I want to expand them (science -> biology, chemistry, earth science, physics and astronomy).

Matching schools across campuses.

I realized that"top-down" is the best way to create this particular controlled vocabulary and organization scheme because:

1. When staff need to add a new project, they will know what school or department they were working with. Rather than artificial groupings, by using the organizational structure already in place at the university, it will be easier to categorize the projects.
2. If someone from a department or school is looking for projects that are in their field or a related field, they will have an easier time picking the "correct" field by being able to associate it with the school they are in.

I also used a few of the sample projects as test cases, listing what fields each would be tagged with. The differences between version three (the previous version I liked best) and version six are subtle if they exist at all. But the sample size is small, with biases toward particular fields. The big differences are in the fields that aren't as well represented in my sample. (The biggest difference is actually just the organizational structure and not trying to shoehorn fields into categories.)

I feel pretty good with version six. Which is good, because I need to present a solution at a meeting on Monday.

I also made a preliminary wireframe of the homepage based on feedback from the previous meeting and implementing the filters I have been working on. 

Takeaway: Sometimes you have to start over. Sometimes you have to step back and rethink. And it always helps to keep the audience and end users in mind, because that helps inform more usable choices. (Sometimes the best choice isn't the objectively "correct" choice.)

Academic fields and their relationships

As previously mentioned, I am currently tasked with determining the controlled vocabulary for:

• category
• field
• campus
• year

Campus and year are fairly simple. I feel like I have a pretty good handle on category, although that list might undergo minor changes. That leaves academic fields.

I had a rough list based on the fields of the 50 or so projects in my sample (some staff members shared projects, visualizations, and media that they work with; I have used those items to develop the list of keywords and filters that I have previously mentioned). 

Part of the trick with this project is making sure the controlled vocabulary can grow as needed. Currently, there are a few academic groups that the AVL has regularly collaborated with, which creates a bias toward those fields. Bearing that in mind, I started by creating a list of all the schools and departments on the eight IU campuses. 

There are a lot of fields represented by all the departments and schools.

Next step: I sorted all those departments and schools into broad categories: humanities, social sciences, natural sciences. There is a lot of overlap between humanities and social sciences. And natural sciences leaves out some important areas. Changing natural sciences to formal sciences (mathematics), physical sciences (chemistry, physics, earth sciences, space science), life sciences (biology), applied sciences (engineering, computer science, medicine, nursing, etc) is more useful, but also a lot of board categories, some of which really only have one field (yes, there are fields like microbiology, but the goal of this is to narrow the long list).

So I have settled on broad categories of humanities, social sciences, and sciences, with some fields further split out. While the list isn't quite done, I'm pretty happy with where it is right now. There will be some tweaking, but I feel like I have a good base. 

Part of creating this controlled vocabulary is testing it against my sample. I need test cases to demonstrate how the controlled vocabulary would be used. And there are a couple of items in my sample that don't fit any of those fields.

Now, athletics aren't necessarily an academic field, but sports are a big deal at a university. A couple of the visualizations involve Olympic or World Cup data on the Science on a Sphere. The athletic department might potentially be a client (the AVL has worked with the athletic department in the past). So I am considering adding athletics as a field. It's something to discuss with my supervisor, at any rate.

And that's where I am. Refining my lists, waiting to talk to my supervisor. 

Persuasion

Monday I presented my project progress to a small group, including the manager and director. One of the things I have been working on, as you know if you've been reading this blog, is coming up with controlled vocabulary terms for filters.

Filters, especially drop-down menus, get a bad rap from some folks, but they are actually very useful in helping website visitors to find what they are looking for. Without filters or some way to narrow down selections, a large collection of items, which this site will be, can be overwhelming. Yes, it's good to allow free text search, especially if someone knows exactly what they are looking for. But not everyone does.

Controlled vocabulary and filters aid browsing and serendipity.

In the presentation, I ran into some pushback on the idea of having a controlled vocabulary and having filters, because "I hate drop-down menus." So what was supposed to be an hour-long meeting where I presented my progress and we set down next steps became an hour and a half meeting wherein several of us spent about 45 minutes persuading the director that a controlled vocabulary was both necessary and useful.

We did convince him. He did agree that we could implement a controlled vocabulary in a way that would not be onerous and would make things work better.

We also agreed on the categories for filters and/or keywords:

• Category - What is the thing? The controlled vocabulary for this is pretty solid and might need minor tweaking.
• Field - What academic field(s) does the project apply to? I have a start on this controlled vocabulary, but there are a lot of possible fields, plus I want to limit the list to about 20, if possible.
• Campus - Since the AVL spans all 8 IU campuses, a project might be initiated at a particular campus. Controlled vocabulary for this will be fairly simple: we just have to decide on the format (e.g., IUB or Bloomington).
• Year - I think this will be a simple 4-digit year.
• Name - This would be a tricky one for a controlled vocabulary (it could be done). The agreement we came to was that this field would be free-text for data entry, which may or may not be the best. Hopefully we can set a standard (first name first or last name first? initials or full names?).

My task for the rest of this week is to nail down the controlled vocabulary. I'm also supposed to work up some test cases to demonstrate how the controlled vocabulary will aid someone in finding an item.

The original schedule had me designing, which I had started, but they are less concerned with following that schedule than with getting this part worked out since this is where efforts at organization have failed in the past.

Take-away: Sometimes you have to step back and slow down to do things right. Rushing would get something done, but it might not be as long-lasting. Also, sometimes you have to stand up for what will be a better choice.