March 2, 1999
Suffragists Speak Group:
Problem and Solution Overview | Analysis | Task Analysis | Scenarios | Suggested Solutions | Experiment Outline
The existing "Suffragists Speak" multimedia web-based resource (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/courses/final-projects/suffragists/SuffragistsSpeak/frame.htm)
is a workable and useful Web site that contains a large amount of information
about the women’s suffrage movement of 1910 to 1920. However, there are several
design-based problems that need to be addressed to make the site as useful as
possible to potential users. The Suffragists Speak group will add functionality
by altering the design and adding features to make the site more navigable and
to make information easier to find.
Navigation of the oral histories, which constitute the cornerstone of the site, is problematic because they are encoded in SGML/TEI and reside on a remote server. When the SGML pages are displayed, they are translated to HTML on the fly by Dynaweb, which has a proprietary interface that looks different than regular HTML pages. Due to limits of technology (and our skills), it may not be possible to completely disguise the interface, but we will explore the possibilities. Another solution is to keep the Dynaweb interface, but alert users to the differences that they will encounter when they are about to view (click on) an SGML document. This is not an optimal choice because it might overload users with too much unnecessary information. If we choose to integrate the SGML pages we will need to be careful not to lose functionality (such as search capabilities) that the SGML pages offer.
Through heuristic usability studies, we will attempt to determine how to best display navigational information in the site. The current interface is based on a left margin frame, which is required to enable users to navigate back to the HTML pages after linking to the SGML oral histories. One drawback of the frame interface is that it prevents the user from seeing the changing URL. Although the text in the frame provides location information (the font of the link to the current page is larger and a different color than the rest of the text), it is not obvious. Currently, the Web site also displays navigational information at the tops of the pages. While displaying two navigation options from nearly every screen provides the user with many choices, it may be too redundant and confusing.
The Suffragists Speak timeline, which summarizes the suffragist-related events during four years, should be linked to other relevant pages throughout the site so that it becomes an integrated part of the oral histories or other site resources. One solution for integration of the timeline is to provide links within the pages whenever a noted event or person is mentioned. These links would take the user to the appropriate place on the timeline page. However, including many links on a page would start to look messy and the multiple links might not allow users to return back to where they came from. Another possibility is to provide the timeline (with links) at the top of the pages. Regardless of which way we choose to display the timeline, we will have to be wary of crowding too much information into a small space, and of crowding the main page with too many frames. We will also have to be sure that users can easily navigate back to their place on a page.
In addition to the suffragist chronology, we would like to provide a contextual timeline that would include information that helps orient the user to other historical events of the period. Such information might include politics, fine arts, technology, and sports. We might implement this using frames to allow the years of the timeline to be listed along the left side (or top) of the screen while the contents from each year appear in the main frame on the right (or below). The drawback of this scenario is that users might not want to be pulled away from the suffragist pages to read complementary information.
The Web site search page allows the user to search for a name or keyword within all of the documents contained in the site, including the oral histories. The search engine helps to distinguish the site because the SGML search results return the number of times the search term occurs and highlight the search terms with red font within the documents. However, the interface of the existing search page is unclear. It should indicate the proper form of a name (e.g.: first name first or last name first), and provide search options. The user should also be able to browse the search options by category. The current solution is to present an alphabetical list of names prior to displaying the search screen. A better way would be to include a link to names and a link to subjects on the search screen itself, so that the experienced searcher can start searching without the intermediate step.
Questions: What are the steps you take to conduct research for a paper or complete an assignment for history class? How long are the assignments? How much time do you generally spend on research for an assignment? What kinds of sources do you use and which ones do you like best? Do you use the Internet and/or CD-ROMS for research? What are the barriers to using the Internet for research? Have you learned about woman’s suffrage in your history classes?
Summary of response: Usually she is given a particular assignment and a general topic (for example, make up a family in the 1920s—describe who the family members are, where they are living, their interests and occupations, and their daily concerns). This student generally starts her research by going to the adult section of the Berkeley Public Library (which she prefers to the library at her school). First she looks up her subject on the online catalog or describes her research goals to the librarian. Because she rides a bicycle and has to carry all of her books in her backpack, she tries to find one book that best deals with all of the topics she is interested in. If she has time she likes to look at old newspapers on microfilm, but there generally isn’t enough time to do that. She generally finds video documentaries about her topic either boring, or not reliable enough to answer her questions. She especially likes first-person accounts, rather than textbook accounts of history. If she’s really interested in a topic she will read a fictional account of issues relating to that time period or issue, but that generally isn’t required. She does not use the Internet for research because the search engines are too frustrating to use, though she does know some people who like to use the Internet. If her teachers gave her a URL to look up, she would, but her teachers don’t recommend the Internet (which is not to say they recommend against using the Internet). She hasn’t used CD-ROMS for history, either. She hasn’t been taught much about woman’s suffrage. Most of her assignments have been 2-5 pages long. There are some computers at school, but not in the history classes (not enough room). If there were computers in the class, she’d be interested in seeing the teacher demonstrate a CD-ROM or look up sources on the Internet during class.
Questions: What are the steps you take to conduct research for a paper or for your dissertation? How do you arrive at a topic? What kinds of sources do you use and what are the pros and cons of the different kinds of sources you use? What kinds of resources do undergraduates need for historical research? Do you use the Internet for research? What would be your ideal online resource? In your estimation, what is significance of woman’s suffrage in American history?
Summary of response: She generally formulates her topic by reading through secondary literature, and following an idea that is suggested in a footnote, or marginal idea. She’ll then look for primary resources if they’re available locally, while she continues to read secondary sources related to the topic. She uses the UCB library a lot, for browsing and gathering resources. She sees the Internet more as a tool, than a resource. She thinks the Internet is very good for gathering bibliographical references to primary and secondary materials, but is somewhat skeptical of the academic quality of a lot of the historical content on the Internet. Many of the resources she has seen are journalistic in style, and do not cite sources used, or refer the reader to other resources—so it’s hard to verify that the content is accurate.) She has not been impressed with a lot of online historical sources, but admits that she isn’t terribly up-to-date on what’s available. She encourages the undergraduates that she teaches to use the Internet, but to exercise caution when drawing from non-academic sources of content. She thinks that woman’s suffrage is highly relevant to American history, and that it represents a major historical turning point in terms of American social movements and the notion of "rights," and because it reflects a notion of individual identity as a highly gendered experience. She thinks visual resources are especially useful for undergraduates, especially political cartoons, because they require original analysis that synthesizes factual information and theories gained from written sources. In her estimation, undergraduates really need contextual tools to understand particular historical events and periods in relation to other historical trends and events. Newspapers are valuable, not only for providing an account of what happened, but also for providing context for other events occurring at the same time. (She thinks it’s crucial to understand the political bias of a newspaper to best interpret the information provided in a news report or editorial.) Thinks oral histories are valuable resources, too—especially for the kind of insider information they reveal (not necessarily for reliable historical facts.) Correspondence is a vital but difficult source, because it takes a lot of time to go through to find relevant items. One of her primary concerns about an online resource is that it would carefully note all sources of information, and lead users to other related sources.
Questions: What kinds of assignments do you give to your students? Do you teach research methods? What kinds of sources do you recommend that your students use? Do you recommend that your students use the Internet? How would you approach teaching woman’s suffrage?
Summary of response: She emphasized that, to make her classes relevant to the ethnically diverse student population at Berkeley High, the subjects she teaches have to carry ethnically diverse content. And too often feminism and women’s rights are associated as a white, middle-class concern. Her courses include kids at all levels, including ESL students—which means that she has to write very clear assignments, and point to a lot of sources (she uses all kinds of primary and secondary sources). Her assignments are tied to units taught in class, and her guiding goal is to help students relate their own lives to larger intellectual ideas and historical events and periods. She thinks it is important for students (especially girls) to learn how to use the Internet, so there is no fear of technology. She herself is most comfortable with book and print-based materials, however, and has a large library of resources available in her classroom. She knows that younger teachers are encouraging use of the Internet, however, and thinks that is good. She tries to match students with the types of sources they’d be most interested in—so visual images for a student interested in photography, written materials for students who like to read, video documentaries for students who don’t like to read, music sources for students who like music. She likes to get students to teach each other. She’d want the online resource to provide a broad context of information, related to legal issues, health, education, economics and business. She’d want it to be possible to discover, from the resources provided, how the social movement for woman’s suffrage began to develop, what led women to act individually—and together as a group. What did women have in common? She’d want students to be able to learn about woman’s suffrage in the context of human rights in general—its relationship to the Civil War and the temperance movement. She’d want students to evaluate woman’s suffrage critically—what were the outcomes, what did it gain, what mistakes did it make, what can women today learn from what happened before?
|
|
Browse Subject Categories |
Look for Overviews and Short Biographies |
Use Timelines |
Conduct Search with Search Engine |
Look at Most Resources on Web Site |
Look for Specific Information |
|
Researchers: Graduate Students/Scholars |
20 |
5 |
5 |
30 |
10 |
30 |
|
Undergraduates |
20 |
20 |
20 |
20 |
10 |
10 |
|
High School Students |
10 |
30 |
25 |
5 |
10 |
20 |
|
Educators: University Professors |
20 |
20 |
5 |
5 |
40 |
10 |
|
Middle and High School Teachers |
10 |
20 |
10 |
10 |
40 |
10 |
|
Elementary School Teachers |
5 |
20 |
20 |
5 |
40 |
10 |
1. High school student: Is writing an assignment for her American history class, for which she has been asked to create a fictional family living in 1915. She decides to make the mother a suffragist, and her teacher suggests the "Suffragists Speak" site. She looks it up on the Internet, clicks on "Meet the Suffragists" to see if she can find someone who was a mother. She reads through the brief biographies provided, and becomes interested in Sara Bard Field, who was a mother and a poet. She clicks on "Read oral history" of Sara Bard Field. When the Table of Contents page comes up, she clicks on the section that seems to relate to Field’s activities during 1915. After she reads through that chapter of the manuscript, she decides to click on the "Suffragist Chronology" on the top frame, to get a better idea of what was going on in the Suffragist movement in 1915. After she reads through the chronology, she decides to go back to the "Meet the Suffragists" page because she remembers that there were links to some of Field’s writings and speeches. This gives her plenty of material for her fictional character.
2. History Graduate Student: Is writing a dissertation on women reformers in the American progressive era, with a special focus on Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago. Accesses the "Suffragists Speak" web site, looks through our sources, and then calls up the search page to conduct a search of "Jane Addams" over the entire collection of resources. The search results point to many different types of resources—several of the oral histories, some newspaper clippings, and some books.
3. High School Teacher: Is interested in international connections to the American woman’s suffrage movement. Recollects that there is a mother-daughter British "team" but she cannot remember their name (if only she could see a list it would come back to her). At the "Suffragists Speak" site sees that she can browse subject categories—chooses that option. Sees the name "Pankhurst" and remembers that that is the name. Clicks on "Pankhurst" and she is returned to the search page and "Pankhurst" has been automatically placed in the "Search for:" box. Submits the search and is pointed to some interesting documents.
1. Left Margin Frame
We will rearrange the left margin frame so that the links that formerly
appeared at the tops of the pages will now be integrated into one frame.
(See the sketch of the revised left margin
frame on the Home Page.) We will also highlight the link to the current
page on the frame (by using a box or different color around the text) so
that it is more obvious.
| Rationale: Placing all of the navigational links on the left frame
will allow the user to more easily “back up” and otherwise navigate from
the SGML oral histories. From the task analysis interviews, we imagine
that some users will read a brief biography of a suffragist on the “Meet
the Suffragists” page and then link directly to an oral history. In order
to get back to the “Meet the Suffragists” page from the oral history, the
link to that page must appear in the left margin.
Functionality: The easy accessibility to all of the contents of the Web site adds functionality to the site. It enables users to easily navigate from one page to another without having to use the back button or return to the home page. |
2. Integration of SGML Pages
We will remove the clunky Dynaweb interface from the oral histories. The interface
displayed a bottom frame that included search and other buttons. (See
a screen shot.) Most of the buttons would not be useful to the Web site
users, and would only serve to confuse them. By eliminating the bottom frame,
we do not lose the Dynaweb search capability (which works well if you know SGML
tags) because it is now included on the Suffragists Speak search page.
| Rationale: The rationale for losing the Dynaweb frame is obvious. It
is unwieldy, unnecessary for our purposes, uses up screen space, and confusing
to the user.
Functionality: While some Dynaweb functionality would be lost by eliminating the Dynaweb frame, users are probably most concerned with the search functions, which can be accomplished from the Suffragists Speak search page. |
3. Timeline
We will add a frame at the top of the screen that contains two timelines: one
with contextual information about world events and one with the suffragist chronology.
They will be different colors and both will be broken down into years. (See
the sketch of the home page showing timelines.)
Clicking on a year will cause a new browser window to “pop up” on the screen
(see sketch).
| Rationale: Using pop up windows will allow users to browse the timelines
without losing their place in a document. They can also switch back and
forth between screens as they read.
Functionality: The easy accessibility of the two different timelines adds functionality to the site by providing contextual information. The use of pop up windows takes care of the problem of taking the user away from a page in order to view the contextual information. |
4. Search screen
The search screen will be altered so that the user has a choice of
search options (“quick” or more in depth) and is able to search or browse
by person, place, organization, or subject. (See sketch
of new search interface and browse screen sketch.)
| Rationale: Experienced users, or those who know what they are looking
for, can simply use the “quick search” option. Users who want to know their
search options or do not know what they are searching for can take advantage
of a combination of browsing and searching. For example, they can browse
a list of names to find out who is mentioned in the site, and then perform
a search.
Functionality: SGML provides the ability to search for keywords, subjects, names, and more within a document. However, searcher must know the proper way to enter the search (last name first, for example). Providing the browse page enables the user to easily enter the authorized form of the name, place, organization, or subject. |
Results and Discussion
The users will inform us of their preferences regarding the layout and content
of the timeline. Their feedback will help us to create an effective site with
information that people are interested in using and can easily find.
Independent Variables
Dependent Variables
Participants
Results and Discussion
It is expected that users will state a preference for the different interfaces
presented and give us feedback on how well the Dynaweb (SGML) interface is masked.
We anticipate that the testers will give us valuable feedback that will help
us to create an easily navigable site and one that offers both a good introduction
to the era and the opportunity for in-depth study.
