The Usability Imperative Inherent in the Semantic Web

A tremendous amount of hope — and hype — has been attached to Tim Berners-Lee's concept of the Semantic Web, where machine-readable “meaning” enriches the promise of the web. Creating a positive, successful, trust-worthy experience for users is crucial to its success. What does that mean? What is imperative for it to become the “next generation” web? Most importantly, why must the usability community play a leading role to shape the Semantic Web in a positive, user-centered way?

Download the paper on The Usability Imperative Inherent in the Semantic Web

More insights

Duane Degler

AI Explanations as Two-Way Experiences, Led by Users

How do we craft designs that "explain" concepts and respond to users’ intent? Can AI identify, elicit and apply relevant user contexts, to help us understand AI outputs? How do explanations become two-way, as users can explain their expectations and offer feedback?
Menu Mania: What's Wrong With Menus and How to Fix Them

Menus are ubiquitous in websites and applications of all types. They are critical to accessing the information and actions that users need, yet they can be very frustrating to use. In this presentation we review what we have learned about best practices for designing mega menus, context menus, hamburger menus, full page menus and other types, and share case studies of menu redesigns for enterprise applications, mobile apps, and information-rich websites.
Connecting Art & Archives for Research, Discovery, and Storytelling

If you’ve ever sat in on a discussion between a curator and an archivist, then you understand the breadth and richness of stories hidden in collections. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has developed a scalable infrastructure supporting integrated information from art, archival, library and historic home collections. Collections Online is a vital shared resource for the Museum and the public. Exploring rich relationships reveals a wealth of contexts, perspectives, events, and places. Learn about how the Museum is envisioning the future of its publishing and collections-based storytelling.
IA for AI: Shaping the Experience for Human-AI Systems

Participants collaborated in building upon the IA-for-AI framework that was first presented at IAC 2021. We explored what it means to understand, translate, and describe the types of situations where human-machine interaction occurs, and the way the relationship changes in real-time. Participants discussed opportunities and responsibilities that IA brings to human-AI relationships.
Hello, Meet Hola! Design for Mixed-language Interfaces

A global online user population necessitates the exchange of content from different sources, and the ability to aggregate multilingual content is a critical requirement within many research and business contexts. To effectively reach a global audience and provide access to content in multiple languages, we must structure mixed-language content to support its successful presentation and delivery, and provide innovative designs that facilitate exploration. In this interactive session, we provide real-world examples for doing just that.
Guiding Users Towards Action: Empowering Decisions Through Effective Data Design

Good design can help users quickly grasp a situation, make better decisions, and take productive actions. In this session, we provide a framework that describes a progressive evolution of data displays and actions, and share a broad range of examples, from consumer products to enterprise web applications, to discuss ways to design effective data displays and integrate actions.
How IAs Can Shape the Future of Human-AI Collaboration

Sometimes people describe Artificial intelligence (AI) as an “emerging intelligence,” but it is, in truth, the emergent collaboration with humans that fosters positive personal, societal, and environmental outcomes. We outline a framework that Information Architects (IAs) can use to help them think about the key issues in designing for AI systems.
Don’t Document it—Prototype it!

In this article by Michael Owens, she explores the Catch 22 of traditional documentation: that whatever you write is inevitably going to be either too much or too little. Walking the tightrope between providing enough detail to be useful and avoiding too many words to be overwhelming can be a delicate balance to strike for any designer, and that's where prototypes can make all the difference.
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections Website

In this demonstration of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's collection browse website, launched as a beta in September 2019, Duane Degler and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's Rana Chan discuss the project background, linked data architecture approach, and the O'Keeffe team's thoughts on the future. This webinar was presented to the Museum interest group of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) community.
Don’t Document It, Prototype It!

In this DCUX 2019 lightning talk, Michael Owens shares valuable tips about communicating UX requirements to your development team with annotated prototypes.
Linked Information and an Enhancement Ecosystem

In his Information Architecture Conference poster, Duane Degler offers key steps in the theory and practice of managing information as linked data, a framework that supports ongoing enhancement of digital resources, and ways to support cross-silo information resources within, and across, organizations.
User and Information Design Considerations for Effective Semantic Search

Semantic search seeks to enhance the meaning in content, to more closely align the searcher and the available information resources. This means there is a strong user-centered aspect needed to unlock the benefits. In this NFAIS Conference presentation, Duane Degler explores strategies and considerations for best supporting your users through effective semantic search.
Big Data in Small Graphics: Micro-Visualizations in SaaS and Enterprise Applications

In this UXPA session, Lisa Battle and Rachel Sengers explored the use of micro-visualizations to enhance user experience and how to best design effective visualizations.
How to Design Great Dashboards and Visualizations for SaaS and Enterprise Applications

In their UXPA 2018 workshop, Lisa Battle and Rachel Sengers discussed how to ensure a good user experience for dashboards, brainstorm together on the common building blocks of dashboard design, and generate ideas for visualizations to quickly communicate data.
Archives Strengthening Historical Narrative: Sharing Digital And Linked Data Resources For Broader Reach And Sustainability

In their MW2018 panel presentation, Duane Degler joins Mark Coffey and Alan Watts, both from the Texas Coastal Bend Collection, to provide insights into ways oral history and images can be used to assemble flexible topic-based narrative structures. This session provides insight into technical and curatorial approaches, so others don’t have to “start from scratch.”
Going Global: The Intersection of IA and UX in a Multilingual Environment

In their IA Summit talk, Kate Blanch, Rachel Sengers, and Janette Shew discuss how to structure multilingual content to support its successful presentation and delivery, and how to provide innovative designs that facilitate exploration of that content.
No Static: IA for Dynamic Information Environments

In this IA Summit talk, Duane Degler provides an overview of the dynamic information landscape, positions the role of IA firmly at the heart of its ecosystem design, and provides ideas for weaving this into your practice.
Linked Collections and an Enhancement Ecosystem

In their ARLIS/NA poster, Duane Degler and Kate Blanch offer key steps in the theory and practice of managing collection data as linked data, a framework that supports ongoing enhancement of digital resources, and ways to discuss your approach toward digital scholarship.
Integrating Taxonomies and Ontologies into Enterprise Search and Browse

In this Data Harmony User Group 2018 session, Duane Degler outlines approaches for increasing taxonomy integration into search and browse, thus drawing the greatest value from your taxonomies for your users.
Guerrilla Glue: Making Collaborative Digital Innovation Projects Stick

In this MCN2017 session, Duane Degler moderates a panel discussing how institutions and projects are using linked data and modern technologies to achieve long-term outcomes for themselves and others.
Split Focus: Designing Applications for Multiple Monitor Setups

In this UXPA 2017 session, Lisa Battle, Michael Owens, and Rachel Sengers discuss new UX design patterns and challenges that arise in software and web-based application design for multiple monitors, illustrating them with real project examples.
Accessibility 101

In this Baltimore UX Meetup presentation, Michael Owens and Lesley Humphreys explore recent standards, assistive technologies, and the types of deliverables that can be used to specify accessibility compliant interactions.
Micro-Visualizations: Small Visualizations That Make A Big Impact

In this UXDC session, Lisa Battle and Rachel Sengers present examples of several different types of micro-visualizations and discuss how they can be used effectively to improve user experience.
User Experience Design Considerations for Multi-Museum Online Collaborations

In this MCN2016 session, Duane Degler and Lesley Humphreys share human-centered user experience considerations and requirements that pertain specifically to the challenges faced by collaborations among multiple collections, sites, and institutions.
Designing Great Dashboards for SaaS and Enterprise Applications

Dashboards present a great opportunity to improve user experience by providing quick answers to users’ common questions, but they are also full of potential pitfalls for design. In this session, Lisa Battle will discuss our approach to ensuring a good user experience for dashboards, focusing on 8 principles of UX design that are particularly relevant and illustrating them with real project examples.
First Impressions Matter: Onboarding for First Time Users

First time user experience, while critical to product success, may not be getting the attention it deserves. In this talk, Lisa Battle presents design principles for great onboarding experiences that engage and inform new users, helping them become productive quickly.
Understanding How Content Is Used in Enterprise Settings

Enabling knowledge management capabilities through search and discovery can benefit from richer data to learn the ways users think about the information they find and use. This article describes an approach we developed to support enterprise search and content synthesis for case management and research in legal and scientific/academic domains. We use an extremely lightweight (yet powerful) mechanism to bridge the silos and establish a network of data around the use of information.
Intelligent Understanding of Content Use

Using a rich network of data about how people actually use content, we can find insights by integrating it with other enterprise information sources. In this article, Duane Degler explores how it becomes a valuable input to governance processes, at both the organizational and content levels.
Building Bridges with Taxonomy: Enabling Semantic Integration

Taxonomies should be designed with enough flexibility and transition points to be a bridge to other taxonomies and datasets. Enabling your taxonomy to fit into the larger universe of partner companies, industry standards, federal requirements and complementary term sets gives it a solid foundation for future growth. We explore which vocabulary sets are available for reuse by the enterprise information architect and demonstrate how thinking about semantic integration from the beginning of the design process helps build a taxonomy that endures.
Creating Personal Profiles Across Time and Distance

Personal data capture and algorithmic modeling of user preferences and interests is maturing. In this talk, Duane Degler explores some of the considerations for longitudinal preference management, how adaptive interfaces might play a role, and how users could interact with a model at a particular time in an application.
Simplicity in Web Application Design

Simplicity is one of the most important principles of design. But, realistically, simplicity isn’t always simple. This talk covers what to try when removing functionality or features isn’t an option, provides practical questions to ask when deciding whether and how to simplify an application, and summarizes proven design techniques to use when simplifying applications.
Structure and Metadata: Shortening The On-Ramp To Linked Data

Information Architects codify information’s purpose and context – that is vital for effective use and management. This talk summarizes our approach to understanding dynamic, multi-dimensional information models and the practical tools that help us create them.
Emerging Tastes: Considering How Preferences Evolve

Experiencing cultural heritage is a voyage of discovery and learning, where emerging insights and serendipity play a significant role. The experience also happens in a blended personal and social context. At the broader level, engagement is longitudinal – what we learn from modern cultural experiences (daily life in our surroundings) can provide clues to analogous interests in cultural materials, and vice versa. This paper addresses richness of personal experience poses challenges and opportunities for capturing preferences in ways that support a user’s experience with cultural heritage across institutions and over time, both in the digital realm and where digital interaction blends with a physical space.
Keeping the Vision Alive: Techniques for Communication Throughout the Project Lifecycle

As UX practitioners, we often face challenges “keeping the vision alive” as projects get caught up in constraints, details, and politics. Also, as consultants there is much we can do to prepare the project team to hold the line on needed improvements, advocate for user needs, and build on the “big picture” over the long haul after the UX work is completed. In this talk, we discuss strategies and practical techniques to help teams stay focused on meeting long-term goals, while addressing short-term needs and facing the circumstances and challenges that arise through the design and implementation process, and beyond.
Perspectives and Considerations for Linked Open Data in Cultural Heritage

An overview of considerations for creating, publishing, managing, and using linked data in a cultural heritage context.
Keeping the Vision Alive: UX Leadership in Long-Term Projects

As UX practitioners, we often face challenges “keeping the vision alive” as projects get caught up in constraints, details, and politics. But we cannot let those things derail us or take things too far from that solid, long-term vision. In this talk, we discuss strategies and practical techniques to help teams stay focused on meeting long-term goals, while addressing short-term needs and facing the circumstances and challenges that arise through the design and implementation process. Topics include: maintaining the rationale behind “blue-sky” thinking, methods for questioning constraints to get to innovative ideas, working with interim designs as intermediate steps to the final vision, and creating shared understanding and buy-in across the team for the long-term vision.
Design Concepts and Lessons from Linked Data for Digital Humanities

Projects in LOD-LAM (Linked Open Data for Libraries, Archives and Museums) give us a perspective on creating rich, relevant, usable applications for heterogeneous linked data. This presentation shows examples and describes our design approach.
Now What? Creating Innovative LODLAM Sites and Apps

With the rapid evolution of a semantic web, it is no surprise that many cultural institutions, large and small, are exploring Linked Open Data (LOD) as a means of connecting distributed data across the Web and across internal repositories. This presentation explores the questions, practicalities, and implications related to designing sites and applications for linked open data.
Red Alert! Communicating Status Through Great UX, Graphics and Accessibility

Effective visual design is essential for communicating system and workflow status, alerts, notifications, categories, and prioritization that often must be understood at a glance. Some people believe they can’t use graphics or color for important cues because of accessibility, which is not true. At UXPA’s 2014 conference, we discuss how to create great, visually appealing UX designs that optimize communication of status information for all users.
Dynamic IA: External & Internal Contexts for Reframing

The world of information architecture has changed, and a reframing is moving the conversation forward. Duane Degler contributes a chapter called “Dynamic Information Architecture—External and Internal Contexts for Reframing” to Reframing Information Architecture, a book edited by Andrea Resmini.
Design Meets Data (Linked, Open, Heterogeneous)

The tide of available information continues to rise. The opportunities that come from open access, linked data, sharing resources with other institutions, and standards-based data are enticing - and perhaps overwhelming? In this talk, we discuss the role of design to help you find ways to make the most of your opportunities for new types of interactions and engagement with Information Objects. We share experiences from projects and research that help you think about Information Objects and the emerging drivers for user experience, including Getty and Mellon-funded systems where we’re beginning to test ideas about how to support a broad set of goals for interaction in complex information spaces we're facing today.
Designing for Information Objects: The Library, Archive & Museum (LAM) Information Ecosystem for Now and for the Future

Museums, libraries and archives hold physical objects that people interact with every day. Just as there is a physical object, there is an “Information Object” that people use, and authoritative institutions curate that information for now and the future. This talk is about designing the Information Object, and the role of shareable, structured information.
Enhancement Ecosystems: Enriching Structured Content with User Tagging and Annotation

Formal and informal metadata, classification and descriptions play a significant role in the quality of user experience with content and search. This talk describes “enhancement ecosystems” involving users and content experts.
Developing Style Guidelines for Suites of Applications

Many enterprises grow organically, with diverse products managed by different teams. Style guidelines provide a way for the organization brand itself and ensure consistency across its family of apps while leaving in flexibility to accommodate different contexts of use.
Designing Configurable and Customizable Applications

In complex applications, such as claims processing, learning management, scheduling systems, engineering software, and other such tools, it is common to provide flexibility to modify the user interface (and the underlying processing) to meet widely varying needs, rather than assuming that one size fits all. When working on the user experience design for such products, we need to ensure that it is easy for clients or users to configure the product as they wish, and be mindful of impacts on the overall user experience.
Lemonade out of Lemons: Design increases your data's value to your users

We all want users to gain value from our information and applications. The use of semantic technologies has grown significantly over the last few years, and with that growth has come the challenge of designing clear, useful interactions to help your users find meaning in large and varied datasets. This talk demonstrates that the risk of poor design is that much of the richness of semantically-enabled environments can be lost because the user experiences tend to be overwhelming rather than meaningful and engaging.
Design 10:5:2 - 10 Best Practices, 5 Examples, 2 Actions

Are you thinking about how to achieve designs that will get a positive response from your users? Are you wondering how to refine an interface to work well with semantic data? While the ‘magic’ in design can’t be boiled down to a few simple rules, this talk will show you things you can do that will help get your project started on the right path.
IA 2.0: An Open Conversation about Context, Mobility and Semantics

Information Architecture has the potential to take a leading role in making the next generation of web and mobile applications more valuable for our users. We have key skills to clarify structured data relationships, identify relevance and context, and streamline the usefulness of information. In order to lead, IAs need to understand and address the implications of an environment that is changing fundamentally from what we've known in Web 1.0 and 2.0. What does it mean to design for a Context Web? Note: This file contains points transcribed from the conversations with participants.
UI Design for Semantic Web: From Idea to Experience

User Experience is critical to success - we've seen the evidence of that repeatedly in the Web 1.0 and 2.0 worlds. What role does UX play in the Linked Data world? As more people engage with semantic-driven applications and information - both as consumers and creators - unique interaction styles and experiences are surfacing. At the same time, this presentation points out some new interaction challenges raised by the potential of the Semantic Web.
User Interfaces for the Semantic Web

This is a tangible guided tour of innovative semantic web applications and user interfaces, as well as interesting interfaces that ask the questions: “What is being adopted from current Internet — and Rich Internet — apps and sites? What new design concepts might be possible now or in the future?” The presentation begins to open up opportunities, issues, and implications for people who will be users of the “linked web of data.” And we continue to ask one of our favorite questions: How can it be made easier and more useful?
Preliminary Analysis of Users and Tasks for the Semantic Web

This position paper raises the importance of understanding the users of the Semantic Web and the tasks that will bring them to the Semantic Web. It proposes a high-level framework for categorizing those users and tasks, and provides implications to be considered in end-user interaction design.
Emerging issues, solutions & challenges from the top 20 issues affecting web application accessibility

We describe emerging accessible design issues, based on a second in-depth analysis of hundreds of accessibility issues documented in real projects, and a comparison of those results to a prior study of 1000+ accessibility issues. This poster demonstrates recent trends in the top 20 UI design situations that are likely to pose problems for users with disabilities; highlights several creative design solutions; and identifies several challenges that lack adequate solutions.
Top 20 Design Recommendations for Accessible (and Usable) Web Applications

This paper describes common challenges and solutions for accessible design, based on an in-depth analysis of 1000+ accessibility issues documented in real projects.
Delivering Services Online: It’s More Than Forms

New technologies, reduced workforces, and higher expectations from the public are transforming the way that businesses and government agencies deliver online services. However, online services are not just forms. We describe ways to improve user experience by providing integrated services, preventing errors, using appropriate tone and language, and structuring the interaction.
Designing Software Architectures to Facilitate Accessible Web Applications

The web application is increasingly a platform of choice for complex business software, as well as for Internet online services. We are beginning to identify guidelines for web application architectures that support accessibility. This paper describes common accessibility problems encountered in web applications and explains how architecture can help address these problems through reusable accessible objects; supplementing information in links, buttons and labels; providing comparable access to signposting; handling errors; and providing time-out notification and recovery. It also discusses the critical role of architecture in supporting what we believe is the best way of meeting the needs of diverse user groups: multiple dynamic views of the user interface.
Design Patterns and Guidelines for Usable and Accessible Web Applications

Because we are committed to achieving ease of use for all users, we have encountered challenges on real projects that have led us to question the common belief that accessibility benefits all users. Although the user experience goals of accessibility and usability often complement each other, sometimes they are incompatible—the best solution for one user group compromises the needs of another group. This presentation introduces design patterns that specifically address accessibility, and identifies design tradeoffs that suggest the need for alternate views of the user interface.
Policy Content at SSA: Using XML and Semantic Metadata

A new content management and delivery system has been growing over the past years at SSA. From a content perspective, users have been asking for “simple answers, with all supporting information, relevant to my situation.” From an organizational perspective, the role of content is increasingly seen as integrated with transactional systems in order to sustain quality service delivery in an increasingly complex business environment. From a technology perspective, the use of emerging tools based on XML and semantic technologies provides opportunities for simpler systems that control content maintenance more effectively, improve integration, provide easier content access, and allow migration as systems evolve over time. This case study shows the application and discusses design considerations.
Maintaining Ontology Implementations: The Value of Listening

It's hard to argue against the concepts of self-describing data, contextual interfaces, and richer metadata for content that eventually will make up the Semantic Web. However, it is easy to imagine semantic environments suffering from the same challenges that many content management system implementations and the Web itself suffer from: the preoccupation with data could easily leave us drowning in it. This paper focuses on approaches being explored to promote feedback and user involvement for the maintenance of semantic representations, to ensure they remain useful and current.
How to Design User Interfaces to Support Users and Their Tasks

An analysis of users and their tasks typically generates a lot of rich information… but the process of translating that information into design solutions may seem like “magic.” The truth is that user-centered design is iterative, and requires a mixture of art and science — it takes a series of small steps that both transform and refine the collected information into design solutions. This presentation uses the analogy of building a house to illustrate the process from high-level visioning all the way through detailed design.
Can Topic Maps Provide Context for Enterprise-Wide Applications?

Topic maps provide exciting opportunities not just to make information easier to find, but to increase the usability of software. In order to provide users with the information that applies to their particular situations, in forms that they can use, software must be aware of a user’s context (in a broad, multi-dimensional sense). This paper describes how topic maps can serve as the language for linking information to software applications and for sharing information about context among applications.
Around the Interface in 80 Clicks

As more people gain access to computers and the Internet, it has become increasingly important for designers to meet the needs of a diverse international user population. “One-size-fits-all” is no longer accepted by users. This article outlines many of the things that the designer needs to consider for both internationalization of software (making an interface understandable in many cultures) and localization (changing aspects of the interface, such as language and icons, to match the local cultural expectations and experiences).
KnowledgePlanet KP2000 Learner Interface Redesign

KnowledgePlanet provides a learning and performance management application used by a number of Fortune 100 companies to support their organizational learning. IPGems was asked to look at the opportunities to improve the interface that hundreds of thousands of people use to plan and keep track of their learning and performance activities. The goal was to increase the user's ability to be in control without having to learn the application, and for KP's customer companies to simplify and reduce implementation time and cost. The result received the Award of Excellence at the 2001 PerformanceCentered Design Competition.
Eventful Event Management Application

We developed a prototype application to support the management of large public retail events. The application allows both regular and temporary staff to manage large volumes of sales inventory, suppliers, guest lists, and press communication from a simple, easy to understand, flexible interface. The goal was to increase the user's ability to respond quickly to the needs of different groups of people, often at the same time, in a chaotic environment. The result received the top honor, the Platinum Award of Excellence, at the 2000 Performance Centered Design Competition.
An Information Make-Over for Performance Centered Design

Many of the same types of content that have traditionally been placed in manuals or online help
systems can actually be incorporated directly into the user interface. Connecting the necessary
instructions and information directly to the tasks that they support helps users to perform their work
more successfully. An analysis of existing content types can be done to identify opportunities for
moving content into the user interface.