By Tiffany Gray

Project Introduction

The Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection is an archival collection of oral histories from women who have an affiliation to the Mormon tradition and is part of the Mormon Studies program at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). The Collection began as a project in 2009 under the direction of Claudia Bushman, then a Mormon Studies scholar at CGU, as part of a course on twentieth century Mormon women when she and her students “saw a real and immediate need for more women’s voices to exist in the historical record” (https://www.mormonwomenohp.org/about). Given this determination, she and her students applied for funding and received a grant from the Singer Foundation to conduct a series of oral history interviews with Mormon women so that an archive of Mormon women’s voices could be built. The project initially garnered 150 oral histories – mostly from Mormon women local to Southern California – that were then transcribed into narrative form and bound in hard copy and donated to the Claremont Colleges Library Special Collections, a consortium library for the Claremont Colleges of which CGU is a part of.

Upon completion of the original project in 2012, Claudia Bushman and one of her students, Caroline Kline, felt it imperative that interested individuals outside CGU have the ability to contribute to the collection and have ready access to its materials. Therefore, they published a book titled Mormon Women Have Their Say (2013) that offers an exploration about the newly formed collection, and they created a website for the project called the Mormon Women’s Oral History Project which offers background information about the project and provides preliminary training in oral history gathering. Since the publication of the book and website, an additional 133 oral histories have been collected by different individuals from around the world bringing the total number of oral histories to 283 in the collection. Of the new histories gathered, 30 of them have since been added to the physical collection, bringing the total of bound histories to 180, with the remaining newly gathered histories are currently waiting to be bound and added to the physical collection as well. To further increase ease of access to the collection, all the oral histories gathered for the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection have since been digitized and added to The Claremont Colleges Digital Library (CCDL), the digital arm of the consortium library for the Claremont Colleges. While the initial project website provides introductory information about the collection, the only way to access the digital version of the collection is through the CCDL. Therefore, the primary focus of this case study is to examine user experience and accessibility with the digital version of the collection.

UX Designer’s Role

As a UX designer, I have taken on the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection as a project to offer a redesign of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection ‘Pathway’ discovery and ‘Searchability’ functions so that the collection itself becomes more easily accessible. With that, this initial case study also serves as a pilot study redesign towards a full scale UX redesign of accessing the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection as part of my dissertation work for my PhD. Therefore, this UX case study could be viewed as a preliminary study of an anticipated larger future project.

Problem Statement

Using survey data, usability testing, and interviews with scholars and academics interested in this collection, I determined that both ‘Pathway’ to and ‘Searchability’ of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection are the two major problems the digital version of the Collection has regarding its usefulness as a potential primary source of Mormon Women’s voices. Outlined below are three primary problems of the Collection regarding Pathway and Searchability that contribute to the decreased usability of the histories, followed by suggested solutions to each problem.

Identified Problem and Offered Solutions

• Problem 1: Pathway to the Collection.
  • The pathway from the Project homepage to the Collection page on the Project website is relatively simple and straightforward. However, getting to the digital version of the collection from the Mormon Women’s Oral History Project website is confusing because the pathway from the site’s Collection page to the correct external link is not intuitive and does not employ traditional usability practices for easy user experience.
• Solution 1: User Interface Redesign
  • To address the Pathway problem to the Collection from the Project website, I propose updating the Collection Page on the Project website. These updates include removing unnecessary wording, reorganizing the external links to align with recommended usability considerations and common practices, and including a brief explanation about how the Collection relates to Claremont Mormon Studies. Including and/or updating the information with a user experience focus will help improve the pathway from the Project site to the Collection and help users identify the broader purpose of the Colleciton.

• Problem 2: Searchability of the Collection. (This problem is broken down into two functional problems, both of which affect the searchability of the collection).
  • Problem 2A: A primary problem with using the Collection, both hardcopy and digital, is that parts of the collection have an embargo on them that will not be lifted until 2040. Not all of the histories are under this embargo, but of those that are, the embargo indicates that interviewees remain anonymous until the embargo’s end in May 2040. For this reason, the digital versions of the oral histories have redacted the names of individuals who were interviewed or submitted an oral history to the collection as well as any names of individuals mentioned in the history. The redactions only exist in the digital version of the collection, but when researching from the physical collection, the embargo states that names from the oral histories cannot be used in any form until the embargo is lifted.
  • Solution 2A: From a UX standpoint, nothing can be done about the embargo itself. Therefore, the redesign must navigate around it when considering UX design possibilities. For this reason, updating the platform that houses the digital version of the collection to include multiple searchable functions, including race, location, date (both birth year and year of interview), profession, marriage status, and education level will contribute to making the records more easily accessible.
  • Problem 2B: The usability functions of the CCDL that house the digital versions of the collection are not equipped or designed to help non-archivists or non-librarians navigate the material in a reasonable and/or intuitive way. Unfortunately, the CCDL is designed using a platform called CONTENTdm, a product produced by OCLC – a global library organization that creates library specific technologies and programs, making CONTENTdm a platform used by academic library institutions across the country and the world. Therefore, CONTENTdm itself has several user limitations because it is designed to create uniformity across all library search functions, meaning that institutions who use this platform are limited to the functionality imposed by the program. (This information came from my interview with Lisa Crane, head archivist of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection and Special Collections lead at the Claremont Colleges Library).
  • Solution 2B: To overcome the inability to custom tailor CONTENTdm to meet increased search functionality of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection, the recommendation is to create a digital finding aid for the collection that allows for increased searchability of the collection through different key terms, including those mentioned in Solution 2A. Likewise, adding multiple search function criteria would increase usability as users could search the Collection across multiple parameters to make the Collection more user-friendly. This digital finding aid would then be added to the Project website as a separate webpage on the site.

Scope of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection UX Case Study Redesign

Given the three identified problems in ‘Pathway’ and ‘Searchability’ regarding access to the Collection, the focus of this pilot study will address Problem 1 and Problem 2A. At this time, these solutions do not address the issues that CONTENTdm poses as explored in Problem 2B. However, for the larger, full scale dissertation project, addressing Problem 2B is my the primary objective.

Timeline

The timeline for the pilot UX case study is 1 month, or that is how long it has taken me to compile data from surveys, interviews, and usability tests to arrive at the three identified user experience problems and determine possible solutions based upon the results.  

Design Process

Explore

Survey: To gather data both on interest in the Collection and Pathway to the Collection, a survey was conducted using Google Forms. The link to the survey was initially sent out to individuals known to the UX designer and then forwarded from known individuals to others outside the UX designers associates.

• The survey began by trying to determine which people might be interested in the Collection as shown by the following demographic questions.

• Next, the survey tried to identify research interests in the Collection with the following Questions

• This was a terminal question. For all who answered ‘No,’ the survey was then submitted.

• For those who answered ‘No,’ they were asked the following question:

• For those who answered ‘No,’ this was a terminal question, and the survey was submitted. For those who answered ‘Yes’ to this or the previous question, they were taken to final Interest about the Collection questions.

• For those who answered ‘No,’ they were asked the following question:

• For those who answered ‘No,’ this was a terminal question and the survey was submitted. For those who answered ‘Yes’ to this or the previous question, they were taken to the next series of Pathway questions.

• For those who answered ‘No,’ they were asked the following questions:

• All remaining respondents were asked the following question:

• For those who answered ‘Yes,’ they were asked the following question:

• Next all remaining respondents were asked the following questions:

• This concluded the survey for all respondents.

As the survey demonstrates, only about half of respondents were interested in the collection. Interest in the collection, per the chart below shows that individuals most interested in the Collection are female, work in education, and have a specific religious affiliation – although not necessarily Latter-day Saint (Mormon), even though individuals from a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) background were most interested in the Collection.

Interviews: I conducted four interviews with different individuals to gain a more personal perspective about how individuals view the Collection, including those who are close to the Collection or have never worked with it before.

I interviewed the following individuals for this UX pilot case study:

First, I interviewed two individuals who only have a tangential relationship to the Collection.

• Lynee Lewis Gaillet – Distinguished Professor in Rhetoric and Composition at Georgia State University
• Morna Gerard – Women’s Collection archivist in Special Collections at Georgia State University

Then, I interviewed two individual who have a vested interest in the Collection and its overall success as archival and researchable material.

• Caroline Kline – Current Director of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection at CGU
• Lisa Crane – head archivist over the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection in Special Collections at the Claremont Colleges Library

Lynee Lewis Gaillet and Morna Gerard, while outside the work of the Collection itself, both have vested interest in the kind of material product that the Collection offers, namely women’s rhetoric, oral history work, and archives. Therefore, given their direct relationship to the kinds of material the Collection represents, Gaillet and Gerard find value in not only increasing accessibility to the collection, but using the Collection and sharing about the Collection as part of their own work.

As current director and contributor to the collection Caroline Kline expressed interest in improving accessibility to the collection, while Lisa Crane acknowledged that researching the collection is complicated due to the embargo and overall format of the oral history transcripts themselves. However, as active stakeholders in the Collection, both Kline and Crane represent individuals from within the work of the Collection who desire to see the collection be more utilized.

Define

Personas: Based off the information gathered both in the surveys and in the interviews, the following two personas were developed to help guide usability tests and who to target potential accessibility adjustments to.

Persona 1: Dr. Louise Sheridan

Persona 2: Kendra Nelson

Ideate

Usability Testing

Four usability tests were conducted to determine both Pathway and Searchability functions in, 1) Getting to the Digital Location of the Collection in the CCDL from the Project website, and 2) Searching within the Collection on the CCDL to determine both Searchability in getting to specific histories within the Collection.

As part of the usability test, four individuals were chosen, all were female, held a bachelor’s degree and either worked in education and/or were members of the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) faith. The usability study followed the following steps to determine both pathways and searchability of the collection:

1. Begin at the Project website: https://www.mormonwomenohp.org/
2. Spend 2 minutes perusing the site
3. Determine where the Collection Tab is and Click on the Tab
4. On Collection page, find the link to the Collection on the CCDL
5. Once on the CCDL with the Collection, complete the following tasks
   • Explore the page and identify what is there
   • Find Oral History #082
   • Find an Oral History with a location of Georgia
   • Find an Oral History interviewed by Amy Hoyt/ Caroline Kline/ Claudia Bushman (each tester had a different interviewer to search for).

Once on the CCDL page, each user took a different path to get to Oral History #082. Two users used the page search option and clicked on page 8 (assuming the history #082 was on page 8 if there were 10 results per page), while one used the go to page function to also go to page 8 (making the same assumption as the previous group), and another used the Advanced Search (This result however, did not account for the 0 before 82 when searching, and therefore took several tries before realizing the need to add a 0).

For all of the testers, their initial entry did not work as they had initially thought. Part of this is because of the numbering scheme of the histories and that some of the newer histories are digitally listed by name, even though their oral history in the Collection is identified by number.

Develop

Based on the personas of individuals and usability tests, the proposed changes to Pathway and Searchability for the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection is the following:

• Pathway: Update the Collection Page on the Project Website to be more in line with usability interface practices of intuitiveness and clarity of function (see UI is Communication by Everett McKay, 2013). Patterned after the link boxes found on the WeLoveBuHI website about Oral Histories conducted for the Buford Highway community northeast of Atlanta, Georgia, the following is an example of an updated User Interface that is more user friendly and indicates a better pathway to the collection as well as informative information about the Collection. Likewise, the other tabs provide connections to the collection that are also described in the short entry preceding the boxes.

• Searchability: To increase searchability of the CCDL location of the digital version of the Collection, patterning for the redesign comes from Georgia State University’s digital collection location of the WeLoveBuHi oral histories. By increasing searchable content from the left side panels, individuals can search the collection using different criteria. Here is one way to increase searchability of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection.

Learn

Given that this is a hypothetical redesign, the ability to test these new designs with repeat usability testing is not possible. However, the suggested redesigns in this case study address the ‘Pathway’ and ‘Searchability’ issues discovered during the survey and interviews, and then confirmed with usability testing. By improving the pathway from the Collection page on the Project website and adding other search criteria to the CCDL search menus on the lefthand side of the digital collection landing page, interested individuals have more accessibility to search different elements of the Collection that are more relevant than just a numbered oral history.

Results and Final Overview

As mentioned previously, this redesign is a pilot project for a future, larger scale UX study to improve accessibility of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection. By analyzing different pathways to get to the collection and determining searchability issues once on the CCDL page for the Collection, this UX Case Study offered solutions to two of the three identified problems. The third problem identified – that of the limitations of the CCDL website – requires greater consideration and time than this project allowed. But, the chosen redesign elements of this project do address some of the fundamental issues of accessibility that people encountered when trying to access the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection. At a later date, and with a larger scale study, I hope to address Solution 2B and design and build a digital finding aid for the Collection to make the Pathway and Searchability of the Collection even easier.

(Even truncated, that is a LONGGGGG title)

I’m not great at surveys. But, I do feel like a survey is worthwhile for this particular project. For background, I am planning to send the surveys out on Monday, April 1, and (hopefully) receive feedback by Friday, April 5. My plan is to ask 20 people to participate with the goal of getting 50% participation. (I fully recognize not everyone who receives the survey will participate, so I think having a range goal of participation is helpful).

Using google forms, I will ask the following questions. They are a mix of Yes/No questions and multiple choice questions and should not take the participants more than 5-8 minutes to complete.

1. What is your gender? (Options: Male, Female, LGBTQ+, Other)
2. What kind of profession do you work in? (Options: Medical, Law, Business, Fitness, Education, Computers, Engineer, Other)
3. Do you engage in any sort of research, either for personal interest or as part of your profession? (This includes academic searches, web searches, etc.) Y/N
   • If yes, continue.
   • If no, thank you for participating.
4. Does your research ever include searching for information for/about/by women? Y/N
   • If yes, continue
   • If no, has your research ever led to information for/about/by women, even if that wasn’t part of your initial research interest?
     • If yes, continue.
     • If no, thank you for participating.
5. Please click the link and spend 2 minutes browsing the site: https://www.mormonwomenohp.org/
6. Based off your examination of the site, is this collection about Mormon Women something you would be interested in researching further? Y/N
   • If yes, continue.
   • If no, would further information about the collection be helpful to change your interest level?
     • If yes, continue.
     • If no, thank you for participating.
7. Based off your examination of the site, were you able to determine how to get to the location where the collection is digitally housed? Y/N
   • If yes, continue.
   • If no, was the site difficult to navigate?
     • If yes, If you spent more time on the site do you think you could determine the location of the digital collection? Y/N
       • If yes, continue.
       • If no, thank you for participating.
8. Did you encounter any issues while using the site (for example, site crashed, internet issues, other)?
   • If no, continue.
   • If yes, would you consider returning to the site at a later date to find and/or research the collection?
     • If yes, continue.
     • If no, thank you for participating.
9. Please click the link. https://www.mormonwomenohp.org/contact. Once on the page, click the underlined red word that says ‘online‘ on the page to go to the digital collection:
10. Now on the Claremont Colleges Digital Library page, can you determine how to navigate the digital version of the collection? Y/N
    • If yes, Thank you for Participating.
    • If no, What was the most difficult thing to navigate on the page of the digital version of the collection? (Options: Understanding what is on the page, Knowing how to use the Collection, Determining the organization of the Collection, What to search within the Collection, Other) Multiple Choice
11. Thank you for Participating.

I think with this list of questions, I’m currently trying to determine two things: 1) Is this a collection people would be interested in using?, and 2) How challenging is it to get to the collection and search within it?

For now, I will keep the questions as they are, but I think as I work further on this project towards my dissertation goal, I may want to consider two separate surveys to identify each of the two things I am trying to ascertain. Or, I may just want to flesh out my questions in future to better answer both questions on a single survey. Things to consider…

(That title is a mouthful!)

This week I am conducting interviews with three of the four people I planned to interview for my UX Case Study on the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection. The fourth interview is my interview with Morna Gerard that was conducted as a practice run three weeks ago. For those I am interviewing this week, I am going to detail each individual separately as well as list the questions I am going to ask them. Given the varying levels of engagement that the individuals I am interviewing have with the Collection, some adjustments to each interviewee’s interview questions was necessary to better understand how those with “insider” knowledge about the collection differs from those “outside” the collection.

Interview 1

Lynee Lewis Gaillet – Distinguished Professor at Georgia State University whose research interests include women’s rhetoric, religious women’s rhetoric, feminist rhetorics, archives and archival studies.

• Questions
  1. What is your research focus?
  2. What collections or kinds of collections do you use for your research?
  3. Where are they housed?
  4. How are they accessed?
  5. Have you ever heard of the Mormon Women Oral History Collection?
     • If yes, where did you hear about it?
     • If not, does the title of the collection sound like one that would fit with your research interests?
  6. Here is the link to the site: https://www.mormonwomenohp.org/
     • Spend 2 minutes browsing the site
  7. Based off your examination of the site, what is the collection about?
  8. Now that you have read a bit about it, would you be interested in using the collection as part of your research?
     • If yes, what about the collection do you find correlates with your research?
     • If no, would further information about the collection be helpful to change your interest level?
       • If yes, what kind of information would be helpful to know?
       • If no, what about the collection makes you not interested in using it for future research?

Interview 2

Caroline Kline – Assistant Director for Global Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University; Director of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Project and Collection

• Questions
  1. A deeper dive into your background
     • What led you to your profession?
     • Personal interests as a professor/ scholar?
     • What about the topics you study/emphasize do you find most interesting? Why?
  2. Questions about your initial involvement in the Mormon Women Oral history project?
     • How it has grown?
     • What dynamics of the collection do you see as its strengths? Weaknesses?
     • Where you would like to see it go?
     • What were the initial goals of the project?
     • Have the project goals evolved?
       • If so, how?
       • If not, are the intended goals being met? 
     • Was the intention of the project to always digitize the collection?
       • If so, for what purpose?
       • If not, has digitizing it changed its purpose?
  3. Questions about how it is currently being used as a collection?
     • Who typically uses the collection? How do they use it and/or research it?
     • Any numbers about citations?
     • Or use in publications, etc? 
  4. What limitations you see about the project in terms of usability and/or accessibility by users?
     • In other words, do you see any issues with people researching the collection?
       • If so, what?
       • If not, what is effective and working?
     • What would you like to see made more available or used differently regarding the collection?

Interview 3

Lisa Crane – Western Americana Manuscripts Librarian for Claremont Graduate University’s Special Collections Department, including the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection head archivist

• Questions
  1. Background Questions
     • What is your education background and experience with working in the library and with archives?
     • How did you become interested in your profession?
     • How long have you worked at Claremont Graduate University?
  2. Work on the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection
     • When did you become involved in working on the collection?
     • What was your initial role?
     • Has that role changed at all over time?
       • If so, how?
       • If not, how do you view your role going forward?
     • How is the collection housed?
       • Onsite?
       • Digitally?
     • Are there any issues or concerns for individuals to be aware of when working with the Collection?
       • Can you elaborate?
  3. Digitizing the Collection
     • What role do you play in digitizing the Collection?
     • Was the intention of the project to always digitize the collection?
       • If so, for what purpose?
       • If not, has digitizing it changed its purpose?
     • How is the digital collection organized?
     • Who is responsible for its organization on the Claremont Colleges Digital Libraries website?
     • Who determines what searching capabilities are enabled for people searching the collection?
  4. Improving Accessibility to the Collection
     • How do most users engage with or encounter the Collection? Digitally or Inhouse?
     • Do you see access to the Collection growing or changing over time?
       • How so?
     • Do you think the current arrangement of the collection (both digitally or inhouse) is easily accessible to interested individuals?
       • If yes, how so?
       • If no, how would you like accessibility increased?
  5. Any remaining thoughts?

UX Case Study for Increased Usability of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection Digital Versions

This is a bare bones outline because I’ve done a lot of the preliminary work throughout the practice weeks. But, overall, my plan is to engage in the following steps to develop my UX Case Study. Informally, I’m using this as a pilot run for a broader case study I plan to do for my dissertation research next year.

With that, here’s the plan:

1. Survey. I plan to survey 10 individuals regarding the collection and identifying the level of interest in using the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection for research purposes.
   • Determine 10-20 individuals willing to take the survey
   • Develop the survey on Google Forms. I am most familiar with this form of data collection and feel it will be the most convenient tool, given the time frame to complete the project.
   • I will post my survey questions in my next post. I plan to send the surveys out by March 29 to hopefully receive feedback by April 2.
2. Usability Test. I have already completed two usability tests that I will use towards my UX case study. However, I plan to make a few tweaks to the usability test to have individuals search 3 different parameters of the collection instead of just the 1 used in the practice tests.
   • Determine 3 individuals willing to participate in a recorded session of their exploration of the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection.
   • Identify 3 parameters to have user use to search and/or engage with the collection. I will share these parameters in my next blog post.
   • Conduct usability tests the week of April 1 and conclude by April 5.
3. Interviews. Like the usability test, I have already completed 1 interview regarding the collection. Using that experience as a baseline, I plan to conduct 2 more interviews for my UX pilot case study, but add more targeted questions about what would be helpful information to know and/or see searchable to use the collection.
   • Identify 3 individuals to interview about this project
     • My goal is to interview:
       • Dr. Caroline Kline, Director of the Mormon Women Oral History Collection,
       • Lisa Crane, Head Archivist of the Mormon Women Oral History Collection at Claremont Graduate University
       • Dr. Lynee Lewis Gaillet, Distinguished Professor at Georgia State University who has interest in religious women’s rhetorical practices
     • Conduct interviews by April 5
4. Research Other, but Similar Oral History Collections at Georgia State University for Comparison. After compiling all the research data, I plan to do a comparison of the current Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection housing location on the Claremont Colleges Digital Library to Georgia State University’s Women’s Oral History Collections. My goal is to determine how other academic institutions that have a strong oral history program provide accessibility to their collections and identify similarities, differences, and searching usability.
5. Generate Final UX Case Study. My goal is to have a completed case study by Friday, April 12. As part of the case study, I plan to develop an improved interface design focused on improving the current searchability functions on the Claremont Collections Digital Library interface.
   • My goal – depending on what comes from the pilot – may be to eventually create an independent searchable site attached to the Mormon Women’s Oral History Project website.

But, for the purposes of the User Experience course at Georgia State, this is my proposed outline.

UI is Communication: How to Design Intuitive, User Centered Interfaces by Focusing on Effective Communication is an excellent book at demonstrating the relationship between user interface design and communication. Rather than focus on UI design as a mechanical process to get users from point A to point B, Everett McKay explains that UI design should focus on the communication relationship between users and the user interfaces they interact with. For user experience designers interested in understanding the relationship between user interface attributes and what each one contributes to an effective/affective (or lack thereof) interaction for the user, UI is Communication offers valuable information and explanations about how to make user interfaces communicate better with users.

For this book review, I have divided my review into three categories: Content and Organization, Quality of Information, Ease of Read. With each category, I will offer a holistic score based upon my opinion on how well the book performs and finish offer an overall score based upon the totals.

Content and Organization

Score: 9/10

• UI is Communication does an excellent job of presenting the communicative attributes of UI design in an informative and progressive fashion.
  • Chapter 1 explores communication design principles in a very accessible way by explaining how communication between people and communication between people and technological products are not very different.
  • Chapter 2 offers a brief description of all major types of design elements for user interaction, and makes relatable connections between the elements and commonly understood communication practices employed in writing, speech, and so forth.
  • Chapter 3 focuses on the visual elements of the user interface, addressing the many different attributes a designer should consider from a communication perspective, including colors, font sizes and styles, and animations.
  • Chapter 4 addresses the issue of understanding the user and promotes the use of persona development – when available and when it will actually aid in better UI design.
  • Chapter 5 goes through a complete design process, breaking down stage of the process to help the reader understand that UI design is not a one and done step.
  • Chapter 6 offers two UI design examples and walks the reader each stage of the design process.

• With each chapter, author Everett McKay offers summations of materials covered and practice exercises to help the reader find ways to apply the materials covered. These exercises are helpful in bringing awareness to UI design that focus on communication attributes of the design for UX/UI designers. The approach is well done and very well organized.

Quality of Information

Score: 9/10

• All the information presented is done so in a way that is accessible for even the most basic of UI designers (or non-designers). In focusing on the communicative attributes of UI design, McKay helps UI designers understand that users engage with technology from a communicative standpoint (whether they know that or not). Therefore, designers should consider several elements regarding design that account for a positive UI experience. Much like the approaches McKay encourages in UI design, the communicative abilities of the book mirror his suggestions for UI in how the information is organized and presented in a digestible way for most readers. The approach of viewing UI design as communication centric is a novel idea, however, the perspective of developing UI from a communication standpoint offers wisdom in the idea that “user interface is essentially a conversation between users and a product to perform tasks that achieve users’ goals” (pg. 69). Helping users achieve those goals with a more enjoyable and positive interface can encourage a user to come back again.

Ease of Read

Score: 10/10

• As noted in the introduction, this book is targeted for “entrepreneurs, executives and managers, developers, business analysts, user researchers, testers and quality assurance, user assistance writers and editors, and other nondesigner software professionals who are working with UI and want to raise their game” (9). However, as a novice designer with little software development skill or training, I found UI is Communication very easy to read even for a new-to-the-game-UX-design. The breakdown of how each interface element communicates to the user is very informative – although, a bit technical for those who may be completely technologically challenged. Yet, McKay does a really good job of providing relatable metaphors throughout the book to help readers see the communicative connections. For example, in using writing terminology to explain what different user interface items do, McKay depicts “commands” as verbs and “symbols” as nouns, noting that “commands [which are verbs] are hard to show with symbols [which are nouns” (Pg. 88). Other metaphors used throughout also help created imagery of how certain user interface functions and setups operate. Regarding task navigations, McKay suggests that “a helpful way to think about task navigation is to think about how you find your way around an unfamiliar city as a tourist” (109). This depiction helps the reader understand the communicative relationship between a user and the user interface of task navigations. Overall, the metaphors used throughout help the reader – no matter their level of training UX design – understand the communication relationship between user and user interfaces.

Overall Rating

Score: 38/40

Everett McKay’s UI is Communication offers insightful information about viewing UI design from the perspective of communication between humans and technology. By making the experience for the user more “like a natural, professional, friendly conversation” than the design is probably a good one that users will want to interact with again (Pg. 94) . For UX/UI designers, paying attention to the communicative abilities of the UI design will help them develop more positive and engaging UI designs that users will appreciate.

I love to interview. I’ve spent the last two semesters working in Special Collections at Georgia State University training to become an oral history interviewer. Prior to this blog post I’ve completed 11 oral history interviews as part of my Graduate Research Assistantship in Special Collections – work and training I hope to use towards my dissertation research. I thoroughly enjoy listening to people tell me about their lives, experiences, understandings, histories … everything! People have such varied experiences (and perceptions about experiences as well as ways in which they feel like they can give utterance to those experiences) – listening to their stories is just fascinating!

For my UX interview – while not as personal as the oral history interviews I’ve conducted, – I found the process very similar to an oral history interviewer. First, I determined an individual that I thought might best resonate with my chosen project. I ask Morna Gerard, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Collection archivist at Georgia State University. Morna trained me to become an oral history interviewer and has conducted numerous oral histories with local LGBTQ and women activists throughout Georgia. Therefore, given her extensive oral history experience and since I am looking at a UX pilot redesign of the Mormon Women’s Oral history Collection, I felt like she would be a good person to interview for my project.

Next, I compiled a list of relevant questions in an order that I thought was logical and methodical and shared them with Morna prior to the interview to see if she had any preparatory questions before we held the interview. That way, when we held the interview, Morna would know generally what we planned to talk about. Also, we determined that a Zoom interview would be best for us, given our busy schedules.

On the day of the interview, I sent Morna the Zoom link. Once the interview began, I introduced myself for the recording and affirmed that consent was granted by the participant. From there we went through the interview process with asking Morna the questions from the list I shared with her, including a couple of follow up questions that came up in the interview that seemed to fit given the responses (these are not on the original list, but can be seen in the transcript). At the end of the interview, I thanked Morna for her time and ended the recording.

For documentation purposes, here is the list of questions I shared with Morna prior to the interview:

Interview Questions:

1. What is your research focus?
2. What collections or kinds of collections do you use for your research?
3. Where are they housed?
4. How are they accessed?
5. Have you ever heard of the Mormon Women Oral History Collection?
   • If yes, where did you hear about it?
   • If not, does the title of the collection sound like one that would fit with your research interests?
6. Here is the link to the site: https://www.mormonwomenohp.org/
7. Spend 2 minutes browsing the site
8. Based off your examination of the site, what is the collection about?
9. Now that you have read a bit about it, would you be interested in using the collection as part of your research?
   • If yes, what about the collection do you find correlates with your research?
   • If no, would further information about the collection be helpful to change your interest level?
     • If yes, what kind of information would be helpful to know?
     • If no, what about the collection makes you not interested in using it for furture research?

Here is the video recording of the interview:

Finally, here is a copy of the transcript from the interview:

Transcript

Tiffany Gray (TG) 00:00:03

Hi, I’m Tiffany Gray with Georgia State University and I’m here interviewing Morena Gerard, who has given consent to be interviewed, and they just want you to verify that this is correct.

Morna Gerard (MG) 00:00:14

I have given consent.

TG 00:00:16

Thank you. OK. So to start, I’m just going to go through the list of questions and then we will.

I apologize, I closed my collection list so one second while I open up my list of questions that I had generated.

OK, so to start, can you please share with me your research interests as an archivist?

MG 00:00:47

As an archivist, I am interested generally in women’s history and in LGBTQ+ history. With women’s history, I think my own personal interests tend to be mostly focused on activism and around reproductive justice. My current main interest in the LGBTQ collections is around transgender history.

TG 00:01:16

Wonderful. Thank you. So, my next question then is, given your interest, what collections or kinds of collections do you tend to research and tend to look at?

MG 00:01:28

The collections in my own repository since I’m the archivist for Women’s, and Gender, and Sexuality Collections at Georgia State. I generally look at my own collections and that also lets me know what’s missing, so that it can help me with collection development as well. And I have in the past used Emory for a couple of projects that I’ve worked on as well.

TG 00:01:52

OK, have you ever – this is a side question from what’s on the list – have you ever looked at collections kind of outside those that are maybe tangential to the collections that you typically work with?

MG 00:02:04

Nope, not much. I have taught students how to find them and to use them, and I’ve done research in finding them so that students can then find them. And when I create research guides, some of them include materials in other institutions, but we tend to look at institutions, first of all, locally and then very focused on that particular subject matter.

TG 00:02:32

OK. So, it sounds like most of the collections you look at are more local, that you have easier access to. So, then how do you typically access these collections that you work on?

MG 00:02:43

Well, I’m kind of lucky because I’m actually in the room with them as you’d say. You know, I what I really should do is make an appointment and go into the reading room and look at them there. But I can, you know – I use them appropriately, – but I can use them in the stacks area or wherever. But, I use them in person in special collections.

TG 00:03:07

OK. And then when you access other collections outside of the university you work at, how do you normally access those materials?

MG 00:03:14

The Emory ones I accessed by going there because they do not digitize very much of their material. So, there’s not a there’s not a strong digital component, and especially the kinds of materials that I was looking at like, for instance, Margie Pitts Hames records. Her papers. She was a lawyer who argued Doe v. Bolton and, as a lawyer, her papers can’t be digitized. You have to have permissions and stuff like that. So, I had to go in person, but, you know, from time to time I have looked at digital collections and you know other places.

TG 00:03:53

Do you find there’s a difference in terms of accessibility when you’re working on a digital version of the collection versus in person?

MG 00:04:01

Yeah, I think that with the digital collections, you lose a lot of context because you end up with like you end up focusing; You’re drilling down almost too quickly. When you have a box of materials in front of you, you can kind of see where the folder you want to use lives in in relation to all of the others. And, it’s almost more like browsing, so you can actually…there’s a lot more serendipity involved in using collections in person, then using collections digitally.

However, if a collection is available digitally, you can very quickly get to things that might be really useful to you. So, there’s, you know, there’s benefits in in both ways, I think.

There’s something really meaningful to me as well in touching the stuff and smelling it and just putting your hands on it. That’s just something that is near and dear to my heart. You know, probably because I’ve lived and breathed this stuff, you know, for very many years now. I just think that there’s something to be magical about touching it in person. But, I think that being able to make stuff available digitally, like worldwide, is also an amazing thing to be able to do.

TG 00:05:23

I completely agree. So, then prior to this short interview, have you ever heard of the Mormon Women Oral history collection?

MG 00:05:37

I have heard of it only because you told me. But before that I had not.

TG 00:05:46

That answered my next question: If yes, where did you hear about it?

So. given the little bit that I have shared, does this sound like a collection that might be of interest or fit into research interests that you have?

MG 00:06:04

So, I had to think about this. I think that if the women were from Georgia or from the South – Yes, because that’s the that’s where my collecting area is. It’s like I don’t really collect very much outside of that area for many reasons.

I think is a fascinating area of research. I think it’s awesome. I’m really glad that it exists. If it was Georgia people, and if I wasn’t treading on any toes of another institution that really ought to be… like if there was a an archive locally that was very focused on Mormon history, that’s where this the material should go. If there wasn’t, and my boss said yes, it’s OK to collect that stuff, you know, all of these things. Yes. I would be very interested in it because I think that it’s a very under documented area in women’s lives.

TG 00:07:04

I agree. So, I sent the link to you. Did you have a chance to look at the site? (Morna nods head). So, then based off your examination of the site, what do you feel the collection is about?

MG 00:07:16

Well, it feels like –  and I’ve written this down by the way, – I spent more than two minutes on it. So, I think… I sort of thought… it’s like it’s the lived experiences of Mormon women from all walks of life and multiple – and I don’t even know how to describe this – multiple denominations within the broader Mormon sort of circle. And, one of the things I kind of liked about it was it seems like, and I might be wrong, it’s maybe warts and all. It’s like the good things and the bad things. So it’s not trying to be like ‘Oh, isn’t this all lovely?’ Because no world is like all lovely. And, so I kind of like that that was the approach. It just seemed very holistic. Like anyone and everyone is welcome in this project.

TG 00:08:12

So then, now that you’ve read a little bit about it, would you be interested in maybe using this collection or considering this collection in your research?

MG 00:08:24

I would, actually. Maybe not so much my own personal research, but I would definitely, and I will definitely, encourage… like when I’m doing my teaching. When I’m doing instruction and we talk about, you know, women’s spirituality, and things like that, I will absolutely. I’m actually going to find a way to put the link into my research guide so that people know that this exists.

TG 00:08:48

Oh, wonderful. Well, that concludes the interview. Thank you for your time. I’m going to stop recording.

Reflections on Interviewing, Transcriptions, and Potential Use of Interviews in my UX Case Studio

As mentioned previously, I really enjoy doing interviews. I find them fascinating and love hearing people share their knowledge, insight, background, and stories.

From a writing perspective, transcription is an interesting process. I had to adjust several of the phrases in the transcript from the video simply because we as people often insert verbal ticks and sounds that don’t translate well into written form. Anytime we say ‘Um’ or ‘Ah’ or ‘I, I, I’ as we are trying to collect our thoughts, keeping all of those on a written transcript of an oral interview doesn’t work. So, some adjustments for language and clarity had to take place in the transmediation of the spoken, oral interview into the written, read interview. Likewise, I had to make some editorial decisions on when how to write some of the sentences so that they make sense when read. When we speak aloud, we don’t always pause verbally when we reach the end of a thought, but in written form periods help break up thoughts to make them easier for us as people to process… so, like I wrote earlier, transcription is an interesting process.

Lastly, I plan to conduct at least one more interview for my UX Case Study. At the end of March I will be meeting with Caroline Kline, Director of the Mormon Women Oral History Collection at Claremont Graduate University in California. I plan to interview her as part of this project…with the intention of this project working as a pilot project to a much larger UX case study and redesign for the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection at a later day. That said, I will most definitely use this interview with Morna Gerard as part of my UX case study.

My post this week about personas actually comes from the book I am reading for my book review. (This is not, however, my review of the book…just some insightful information shared from the book that I think speaks perfectly to the notion of personas).

Given the variables surrounding user types and persona potentials, how can UX designers and UI compilers determine the best way to understand different users and their varietized approaches to interface experiences?

As Everett McKay points out, rather than focusing on the differences between users and their personas (because its costly, time consuming, and not always reliable because you can never get a large enough representative data set), focus on their similarities (60).

BRILLIANT, right????

What McKay is trying to point out is that even though users are different in many ways, there are a set of almost universal attributes that most users will utilize when it comes to user interface and user experience that could potentially reduce much of the work of persona development for UX design. For McKay, its not that he is against personas – he actually thinks they can be quite useful, – but he recognizes that cost, time, and data often make persona development difficult for even the most skilled UX team and designers.

To simplify the design practice, McKay offers several generalized assumptions about users that can help UX designers in their planning, should persona development not be possible:

1. Users know the essentials of technology engagement
   • BUT “make it clear what your program does, how to do its tasks, and what the options are…make it easy for users” (61).
2. Users are motivated by value.
   • THUS, make their time count by making the benefit of accomplishing whatever task is required worth their time and effort
3. Know the top questions most users ask about design interface.
   • THEN design your program to answer these questions easily for users.
4. Users can figure things out.
   • BUT… keep things simple, standard, intuitive, self-explanatory, and consistent (62).
5. Users will and won’t do things
   • SO, remember “users are focused on THEIR work, not on learning how to use your UI” and don’t force them to perform unnecessary steps (63)
6. Users need confidence to perform the tasks.
   • THEREFORE give them confidence they can use your design and interface by making it easy to use, intuitive, clear, and communication centered.

In other words, knowing personas might be helpful in designing a user experience that is dedicated to meeting a variety of perspectives and types of people who most likely will engage with the design and interface. However, knowing that most users operate with the same generally approaches to material design, perhaps a focus on the similarities between individuals can make UX designs and interfaces easier to consider and more universal than we often like to think they are.

As for personas in my upcoming UX Case Study…my material is such a niche collection, that I think the best personas I would find myself developing are nuanced versions of essentially the same kinds of individuals – researchers interested in women’s oral histories, Mormon women, women’s histories, religious women’s histories, or similar. In other words, my perception thus far about this collection is that mostly researchers would engage with the Mormon Women Oral Histories Collection…therefore, is attention to the nuance for this that important? Probably not.

Works Cited

McKay, Everett. UI is Communication: How to Design Intuitive, User Centered Interface by Focusing on Effective Communication. Elsevier, 2013.

I’ve never designed a research survey, questionnaire, or anything similar before. Well…not exactly, anyway… except that I have generated surveys to ask women at church, for example, about themselves as a sort of ‘getting to know you’ activity. But, I’m not sure how relevant that work is to generating a questionnaire for research purposes. Perhaps, in a round about way, my ‘getting to know you’ form could be considered the kindergarten version of data collection. I was gathering the information to get to know the women at church for our women’s organization, so that we (the leaders of the organization) could make informed decisions about activities, ministering partnerships, and so forth. That said, needing to know favorite colors or favorite treats seems slightly superfluous in the grand scheme of questionnaire generation.

Anyway, for this blog post, I am planning to share my notes of things I found relevant or insightful from Dr. Pullman’s list of Resources. (My comments or thoughts will be italicized, while direct quotations from his site will be regular font). Afterwards, I will share a video that I found to offer some help on survey generation, which actually offered a little more information beyond the resource material. Lastly, I will note how I plan to use (or at least consider using) questionnaires in my upcoming UX Case Study.

Notes from Resources I found helpful:

Survey and Questionnaire Design: Collecting Primary Data to Answer Research Questions by Jane Bourke, Ann Kirby, and Justin Doran

• A ‘good’ hypothesis must be: Adequate; Testable; Better than its rivals
• Smart Test: Specific; Measurable; Achievable; Realistic; Timely

Asking Questions by Norman Bradburn, Seymour Sudman, and Brian Wansink

• Questions must be precisely worded if responses are to be accurate
• …it is difficult to write good questions because the words to describe the phenomenon being studied may be politically charged (OR…my thoughts…an individuals relationship or understanding to a particularly word may not mean the same to them as it does to others, which complicates wording a questions as precisely as possible)
• Respondents require persuasion to participate

Standard Deviations by Gary Smith

• This is sobering: One out of every twenty tests of worthless theories will be statistically significant
• More sobering that a term exists for this practice: Selective reporting and data pillaging – are known as data grubbing
• I never knew this: Watch out for graphs where zero has been omitted from an axis. This omission lets the graph zoom in on the data and show patterns that might otherwise be too compact to detect. However, this magnification exaggerates variations in the data and can be misleading.
• This might be true for ALL claims: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. True believers settle for less.

Pew Research Center: Writing Survey Questions

• Identify information by “thinking about what is happening in our nation and the world and what will be relevant to the public, policymakers and the media.” These are things that people will care the most about.
• To measure change over time, surveys must be conducted at two different points in time
  • For this, questions should remain mostly the same when asked and should remain in roughly the same place within the survey as the previous surveys
• Interesting approach: Use open-ended questions on pilot study to reveal if there are any common answers across the board. Then, use those answers as the choices for close-ended questions for the complete study.
  • (I like this idea, because, in part, I feel like this can give insight into what people might actually see as a viable response without being prompted. Then, if there are similar or consistent trends in answers, they might work as a base set of answers that many – if not most – people might choose.)
  • Also – limit the number of choices for close-ended questions: 5 TOPS!
• Randomizing questions order helps to limit bias
  • ...but how does this work for surveys to measure change over time where the guidance is to keep the questions in a relatively similar order, so, how can the questions be randomized???. Randomizing the order seems like contradictory advice if it doesn’t work for all survey types.

Video: How to Design a Questionnaire or Survey by Dr. Hayley Stainton

Things I found insightful from this video:

1. The first thing Dr. Stainton suggests determining before any other work is to decide if the survey type will be independent (meaning the individual takes the survey on their own) or interviewer led (meaning the interviewer will guide the survey taker through the questions). I found this an interesting thing to make the primary objective in questionnaire design, even above determining what focus of questions or types of questions to ask. I guess if you (the researcher) have decided to conduct a survey or questionnaire in a particular fashion, then the next logical step could be to design questions that fit the interview style. Although, I think the reciprocal might also be true too, where if you (the researcher) design questions with a particular focus and/or in a particular way, that might dictate what kind of interview style is available to you.
2. A second insightful notions Dr. Stainton added was a third type of question to ask. She listed the common ones I found in the resources of open and closed question types, but then she offered the scaled question, which is a question that uses degrees to determine a range of potential answers split between a positive and a negative scale. The purpose for using a scale question would be to determine a range of positives and/or negatives for a given question, which may or may not contribute helpful statistical data towards the research.
3. One part of the video I found EXTREMELY helpful was the notion of considering – like REALLY considering – the questions to ask in a survey. Dr. Stainton gives the example of ‘why would you ask someone their age in a questionnaire, if age has no part in the research.’ This includes avoiding the tendency to want to add the information of an unnecessary question simply because it was collected, when, again, it is not relevant to the overall purpose of the research. In other words, know WHY you are conducting this research should also help dictate WHAT kinds of questions should be asked. I think the WHY can have more than one answer, but the questions generated should try to help support all the WHYs, not just ask for information randomly.

Looking ahead to my UX case study, I anticipate doing a survey, but probably an open-ended one that asks questions about the kinds of information an individual would want or find helpful to be able to search a collection by (hopefully that makes sense). My target ‘audience’ for the questionnaire are people who I consider might be interested in using the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection for research purposes. I liked the suggestion from the Pew Research Center to use open-ended questions in the pilot study (as I hope to use this experience to generate a more useful survey for my dissertation down the road), and I think using this UX case study exercise as a pilot exercise is a good way to approach my upcoming research.

After reviewing the parameters of this week’s objectives, I’m probably off a bit on this assignment. I still have usable material (I think), but my results might be more targeted than what was wanted. Either way, I’m okay with that, since part of this UX experience is trial and error.

With that, here is the research plan I came up with:

1. Choose a Screen/ Video Capture modality to video capture two separate individuals engaging in a set of predetermined tasks
   • For the purposes of this task I chose to use Zoom. Although this isn’t a program technically designed for video capturing and UX testing, for the purposes of my project, Zoom did exactly what I needed it to do.
2. Outline the parameters of my project and the specific objectives I want to see accomplished
   • Using the Mormon Women Oral History Project website as the starting point, my plan focused on asking two individuals to do the following two tasks:
     • a – Beginning at the Mormon Women Oral History Project Home Page (See Figure 1), find a pathway that will take you to the location of where the Mormon Women Oral History Collection is housed
     • b – Once on the page of the Collection (See Figure 2), determine the pathway to find Oral History #082
   • Using these two tasks as my objective, I took notes to determine which pathway they chose for Task A and then again for Task B and noted the number of steps it took to accomplish each goal as well as the length of time required to complete each task. (In hind sight I think I should have asked my users to look at the page they landed on when they got to where the collection was and identify the web page’s functionality and search options, but that can be for my 2.0 test run of this activity)
3. Enlist the help of two willing subjects to participate in my project
   • To help me complete this step, I asked my friends Jodi and Liz to participate (See Figure 3 and Figure 4, respectively). Jodi is a PhD candidate student at Georgia State currently working towards her dissertation, while Liz is a researcher and genealogist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (They will both probably figure into one of the personas I attempt to develop for my final project).
4. Determine dates that work to host a Zoom Meeting
   • Jodi’s meeting was held on Monday, February 5 at 6:30pm
   • Liz’s meeting was held on Tuesday, February 6 at 4:45pm
5. Record the meetings, asking for participant permission at the top of the video
6. Using the results of the engagement, write up my report

The Results: Jodi and Liz

Getting to the Website

For both Jodi and Liz, I began the Zoom recording by introducing myself and confirming Jodi and Liz’s willingness to participate in this study. I then entered the website link into the Zoom Chat Box. For Jodi, she clicked the link to the site and then began to share her screen with the website pulled up.

For Liz, her laptop was connected to two monitors, so when she clicked the link to open the website, it opened on the second monitor. When she went to share her screen the website was not visible, as her screen share only shared the laptop’s immediate screen. Therefore, Liz had to disconnect her laptop from the second monitor in order to share her screen with the website visable

Task A

For both Liz and Jodi, completing Task A – to go from the homepage to the site page where the collection is housed took less than 40 seconds and required only three steps.

1. At the top of the Home Page, find the tab that says The Collection and click the tab
2. Once on the new Collection page, read the page and scroll down to the link that specifies the online location of the Collection
3. Click the online button and a new webpage opens with for The Claremont Colleges Digital Library

Both Jodi and Liz took the same pathway to accomplish this task.

One thing that the video does show is that users might have trouble understanding what is on the Collection page before clicking the online button. There is a lot of words and several links that users may find distracting or misleading.

Task B

For Task B, Liz and Jodi took very different pathways to find Oral History #082. I will explain each pathway taken and then show a third pathway that is also available.

Another pathway exists to get to Oral History #082, although probably much more time consuming than the ones taken by Liz and Jodi. In my initial interaction with the Mormon Women’s Oral History Collection, I just scrolled through the pages one by one. My objective in doing so was to see how many histories existed in the Collection. Likewise, there is an option to change the number of histories visible per page, with options of 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200. Simply clicking the 100 results per page would have (potentially) taken the user to Oral History #082, but this assumes that the first histories on the initial Collection page begin with Oral History #001…and we already established that they do not.

For this software evaluation, I will be examining Kaltura Capture as a usable software tool for user screen and video capturing that also provides video and audio of the user as they interact with their screen. For my review, I am going to outline the parameters of what I am assessing followed by my recommendation for using Kaltura as a screen/video/audio capturing device for UX data accumulation.

This review will focus on examining the following areas and will grade each area using a 10 point scale:

1. Consumer Accessibility
2. Downloadability of Product
3. Usability
4. Quality of Output
5. Editability of Videos Generated
6. Availability of Tutorials
7. Help Features
8. Industry Reviews

Consumer Accessibility

Score: 5/10

To begin, Kaltura offers several different products to individuals and/or corporations on a monthly or yearly cost. Likewise, their products are offered in different combinations of products, with the prices adjusting according to types of products chosen and the number of accessibility features desired. Here is a link to their many product options: Kaltura All Plans and Prices.

This is a screen shot of what the page looks like:

For the purposes of this review and scoring, I am examining the accessibility of Kaltura Capture from both Kaltura’s Website and from Georgia State University’s Website. Per the CETLOE department of GSU, all students and staff have access to Kaltura Capture for use of video production, screen capture, and more, at no added cost. In other words, GSU students’ tuition helps cover the cost of GSU owning this product and making it available. As the CETLOE site explains, students can access Kaltura from their iCollege page (the LMS chosen by GSU for online course platforming) or from student and staff’s Mediaspace Website that GSU provides for each student.

From Consumers accessing Kaltura from their website, the reason for my score for Consumer Accessibility is based on the following information:

1. The list of products on their service plans do not clearly explain what products are included in each plan. This can be confusing for a consumer, especially if they are just looking for a screen capturing product that will allow them to conduct the type of UX research this course is engaging in.
2. Prices for the different products or plans are not listed. Instead, consumers must click on the individual product plans they are interested and in most cases request a quote from the sales team on the cost of the Product. The closest information I could get on the actual cost of any of the products without going through the steps to request an official quote came from a Google search that led me to a Kaltura page the offered more detailed information about their Media Services Plan. As the image below shows, even this pricing was not clear on what the actual cost of the product is:

As a GSU student and staff member, I likewise gave consumer accessibility such a low score for a set of different reasons:

• I needed to download Kaltura Capture on my computer in order to create screen capture videos. As the CETLOE site indicated, I should have been able to access this through iCollege from any of my courses. However, the option for downloading Kaltura Capture was not listed. Here is a screenshot of the options I have for Kaltura Capture. When I click on Kaltura Course Gallery or Kaltura My Media, neither offer a Kaltura Capture download option.

• I then tried to find Kaltura Capture through the Mediaspace account that GSU offers students. Before I could enter my Mediaspace page, I had to login. Once in, I still had to search through several dropdown menus before finding the Kaltura Capture link. Here is a screenshot of where the Kaltura Capture button finally ended up being:

Downloadability of Product

Score: 7/10

For downloadability, I am focusing solely on the ease of downloading from the GSU Mediaspace page. Since I could not readily determine what the at-cost version from the Kaltura site offered, the remainder of this review is based off of my interaction with the downloadable material made available by Georgia State.

The first time I clicked Kaltura Capture (as found in the screen shot above), I was asked to download Kaltura Capture in order to proceed. The download occurred in a single click of a button, resulting in an icon on my desktop. This is an snippet of my desktop icons that show what the Kaltura Capture icon looks like:

While the download from my Mediaspace page was easy and smooth, Kaltura Capture has a pre-set algorithm to launch every time I wake my screen up. I don’t love this feature because, in my opinion, I don’t like apps that assume I want to use them every time I sit down at the computer. But, despite my personal preference on apps, downloading Kaltura Capture was pretty seamless…once I knew where to find the program to download it. Here is an image of what I see every time I wake my computer from sleep mode:

Usability

Score: 9/10

For usability, I am going to first explain each of the buttons on the Kaltura Capture launch menu.

The Red Button is the Record Button. From a usability standpoint, the Circle Red Button is the standard button for recording.

The Screen Button will give a small drop down screen of what the computer screen itself looks like when you click the small down arrow next to the word screen.

The Camera Button offers a small drop down video of what you the user look like when you are using the screen. To see this you have to first click the arrow next to the word Camera:

And finally, like the Screen and Camera buttons, the Audio Button will show you where the audio stream is recorded from on the device used to record a screen capture. To view this, you also have to click the arrow next to the word Audio:

The ease of use of Kaltura Capture is a very good aspect of the product. The simple user interface is very easy to understand and easy to use. One point of deduction, however, is that when going through the act of recording a screen capture, the user can’t see the video portion of themselves. All they can see is the normal computer screen. It isn’t until the recording session is over that they can view the video with them in it.

Quality of Output

Score: 8/10

To demonstrate how the product looks after pushing the Red Record Button, here is a link to a 1 minute video recording of what Kaltura Capture put together for me: Tiffany Gray Kaltura Capture Video Demonstration.

As you can see, the video compiles well and the output is very user friendly. The video also allows the viewer to switch views, going from only seeing the screen capture to only seeing the camera view and audio to seeing both at the same time. The ability to switch views can be helpful to any UX analyzers who may only want to see user experiences from different perspectives.

While Kaltura Capture is easy to use once downloaded, in my case, the video I created immediately downloaded to GSU’s Mediaspace platform. The program does not give me the option to download the video directly to my computer. Once uploaded to the Mediaspace page, I do have the option to share a link to the video, embed the HTML code directly into a website, or email the link, but I cannot download the video directly to any personal device. Likewise, I was not able to embed the video into this blog post no matter how many different ways I tried. Therefore, while easy to use, I scored the program slightly lower than a 10 because, for usability purposes, the only way this Kaltura Capture experience is useful is if you are GSU students or staff. Otherwise, I cannot speak to general consumers’ potential user experience.

Editability of Generated Videos

Score: 9/10

On the GSU Mediaspace page, there is an option to edit the video. To access the editing option, a GSU student or staff member can login to their Mediaspace page where any Kaltura Capture videos are housed and select the video they want to edit. Under their selected video is a drop down menu titled ACTION that then offers a list of actionable steps the user can take, including an editing feature.

Once the user clicks Edit, they are taken to a new page where several annotation editing options are available, including viewing the audio transcript of the video and adding detailed descriptions about the video.

From here the user can click Launch Editor, which will take them a final editing screen that will allow them to edit the video length, adjust audio input/output, and save an updated copy of the video.

For GSU students and staff, using the editing features through the Mediaspace page given to each student is fairly intuitive and easy to use, making this version of Kaltura Capture a good screen capturing software for easy editing and usability (at least for those associated with GSU).

Availability of Tutorials

Score: 7/10 (For GSU Students and Staff)

The availability of tutorials for using Kaltura Capture for GSU students and staff all exists from the CETLOE site page about Kaltura hyperlinked earlier in this post. At the bottom of the CETLOE Kaltura page, there is a list of links under ‘Get Support’ to help GSU affiliates learn how to utilize Kaltura Capture for GSU purposes.

As the image shows, there are several different tutorials available for GSU students and staff on how to use Kaltura Capture. The emphasis does indicate that the focus is for GSU affiliates to use Kaltura Capture for academic purposes, as indicated with the training of ‘Add Media to your iCollege Course with Kaltura’ in the image as well.

After click on the ‘Using Kaltura Capture’ link from the CETLOE page, it takes the user to a GSU-IT page with tutorial information on how to Download, Record, and Utilize Kaltura Capture.

For GSU-based users, the tutorials provided by GSU are helpful, but require several steps to access them. Therefore, even though tutorials are available, the lack of ease in finding them makes this portion of my rating score lower.

Help Features

Score: 5/10 (For GSU Students and Staff)

The only help option available for GSU students and staff with Kaltura Capture is a ‘Support’ button at the top of the Mediaspace page for each student and staff member.

Once clicked, the ‘Support’ button will take the user to GSU’s IT homepage (which you can access by clicking the link). The homepage should look like the image below:

From here, GSU students and Staff can ‘ask’ for help by search Kaltura Capture in the search bar. Likewise there is a chat box in the bottom right corner of the page to ask (hopefully a live person) for help.

Unfortunately, when searching ‘Kaltura Capture’ in the search bar, only 5 items come up and all of them are more than 4 years old. This means that help options for training on how to use or troubleshoot Kaltura Capture are not kept up to date. Likewise, the search option does not take the student or staff member to a live person to help them walk through the steps they may be encountering when using Kaltura Capture. Therefore, for GSU students and staff, the options for getting help or troubleshooting issues with Kaltura Capture are left more to the user to figure out.

Industry Reviews

Score: 8/10

Using Trust Radius’ pros and cons review page of Kaltura’s products, the general consensus among Kaltura users – not just of Kaltura Capture, but other Kaltura products as well – is that Kaltura is a high performing video capturing platform and company that offers many product options for individuals looking to create interactive videograph-ies of their teaching, UX data accumulation and video platform integrations into existing LMS systems.

From Gartner.com’s reviews of Kaltura, raters indicated that 85% of users would recommend Kaltura to their peers. Likewise, many reviewers indicated the ease of using the platform, but acknowledge – just as this review demonstrates as well – that tech support for troubleshooting issues is severely lacking.

Likewise, G2 reviewers, the popular review site for software companies and materials, shared similar sentiments about Kaltura’s ease of usability, while acknowledging that Kaltura’s cost and lack of technical support made using Kaltura less favorable.

Final Conclusion and Recommendation

Overall Score: 7/10

For the purposes of this UX class, Kaltura is a user friendly video-capturing options, available for ‘free’ to GSU students. The functionality of using the software is easy, methodically designed, and simple to operate, even though it can take a while to find the Kaltura Capture download button if one does not know where to find it. The quality of the video output is a good quality and allows for editing the video to include interactive features and/or adjust the length and audio features. Likewise, but not the most desirable feature because of lack of control over video ownership, the ability to house videos generated through Kaltura Capture on Mediaspace does come with the benefit of ‘free’ cloud storage.

For UX purposes, the use of Kaltura Capture from the GSU ‘free’ option does pose the challenge of having other, non-GSU, individuals use Kaltura Capture because non-GSU participants do not have the free version of Kaltura Capture available to them, unless they have access to it personally. So, if, for the purposes of this class and part of an individual UX case study for this course, a class member wanted to use Kaltura Capture to video capture individuals interacting with a website or app of some kind, they would need to either give their GSU login information to the individual they are asking to do the video capture OR they would need to conduct the video capture with each person using a device that the GSU student was already using Kaltura Capture on and that links directly to their GSU Mediaspace site.

Therefore, while I do recommend Kaltura Capture as a video-capturing software program that will create UX data analysis friendly videos, my recommendation is limited to recommending it to GSU students and faculty using it for GSU centric purposes. If the purpose is to gather user data from individuals other than GSU affiliated individuals, then I recommend using a ‘free to all’ video capturing program that will allow for more access to individuals outside of GSU as well as more control over video ownership and downloadability.