June Ravindra

June's Description (What is her background?)

Dr. Ravindra is a philosophy professor who works in the area of philosophy and technology. She uses the web for her research and teaching, but hasn't built any web sites other than a personal page and few pages for courses. She is not aware of the humanities computing community or organizations. She is typical of someone outside our community, but in a related field who could be interested in the community and the articles. How do we make the site accessible to her?

June's Usage Scenarios (What does she want to do?)

• She wants to get a sense of what sorts of articles and other works the journal publishes? What is its research agenda? She might read some and even assign them to students if she can find interesting stuff quickly.
• She wants to understand what the community ADHO is about, how the journal is related to it, and whether this is a community that interests her?
• She wants to see if there are articles on the philosophy of technology or another specific area that she is researching.
• She will probably only click down one or two levels before leaving if not interested.

Discussion

• June is an atempt to imagine someone outside, but interested in our research community. Note that she doesn't understand all our acronyms, nor does she understand the relationship between DHQ, ADHO, ACH and so on. We have to find a way to welcome people and explain the community.

Jean the Subject Specialist

Jean's Description (What is her background?)

• she is faculty in a particular subject, is just getting interested in digital matters
• she has heard about DHQ at a conference, goes to the site to poke around one afternoon on a whim
• she wants to know about the journal (possible venue for her own work that isn't right for e.g. PMLA)
• she wants to see whether articles in her area of interest are being published

Jean's Usage Scenarios (What does she want to do?)

She needs:

• place she can go to read about the journal (goals, policies, who's involved)
• assistance searching the archive (keywording that will help discover articles in the right domain)

We want her to get:

• a quick and attractive overview of the information available about the journal
• an immediate sense of how to use the navigation to find things
• a sense of connections between the special area she is interested in and the other contiguous/related areas

Design desiderata:

• keywording used as the basis of searching
• "about" page
• links to related articles

-- GeoffreyRockwell? - 16 Aug 2005

Jeanne-Francoise, budding scholar

J-F's Description

Jeanne-Francoise, a smart undergraduate in her third year, has discovered her brain is exploding in her Gender Studies class. She's learning all kinds of fascinating poststructuralist theory, which evidently applies to much more than the canon of writers they're reading in class this term. But she's a bit befuddled (an exploding brain will do that), because even though she thinks she can see how this theory applies in the digital age (she has blogged and built web sites in the past and knows a thing or two about "the Death of the Author"), her professor seems oblivious to most of this. More of a classic ink-on-paper Marxist (which is fine, as far as it goes), the professor is sympathetic (she loved JF's paper about how N. Katherine Hayles' work applies to online music piracy) but still feels, quite frankly, out of her depth when it comes to digital culture.

J-F has the bright idea to go to the source, imagining that scholars in various fields who aren't out of their depth can provide insight into some of the things she's thinking about. Google comes up with Digital Humanities Quarterly, and she's seen references to it too.

What she's looking for: ready access to articles and works on her topics of interest (feminism, post-colonial Francophone lit, digital media esp. blogs and the web); contacts with others in this community of interest; leads for where to study when she goes on to grad school.

J-F's Usage Scenarios

She needs:

• Quick access to current and prior issues (browsing)
• Links to look up particular writers/scholars
• Current info with links on conferences, web sites, programs

We want her to get:

• The easy access to content she wants
• The impression of vitality and activity (best created by being vital and active)
• A pleasing enough experience to get her to return and/or sign up for the announcements
• DHQ fixed firmly in her head for two years hence, when she's in grad school

Design desiderata:

• Legible front page with links to categories (articles, blogs, subject access)
• Subject access
• Cross-linking in the form of author/contributor indexing
• Other "career-related" cross-linking

- wap

Prof Dr Mayer, Luddite crank

Mayer's Description

... has a secret vice: he likes to search for diamonds of Luddism amidst the chaff of the Internet. He's despaired of most of it long since, but he keeps his eye on certain channels, including HUMANIST, Steve Talbott's eye-opening NETFUTURE, and two or three other things, in the hope that once in a while something enlightening will cross his desk. (Mostly he uses email and the web. He also shops on line for hard-to-find books, but defiantly, from an indy bookseller not Amazon.) Once in a while it does. But he hates spam, wading through all this morass is increasingly difficult, and he is always mortified to have to ask his son for help with the hopeless machine (asking questions his grandson often knows the answer to). He thinks it's ironic that he has to do this as a Professor of Communications and Mass Media.

What he's looking for: a precis or synopsis of critical articles in the field that interests him, which might broadly be called "society and technology". Access to such articles. Although a professional skeptic, Prof Mayer does rely on two or three sources he feels he can trust, and would welcome digests of ongoing work to help keep him up to date. What he's not looking for: anything with dancing bologna, advertisements, or code that crashes his browser.

Prof Mayer also serves on the tenure committee in his department and is concerned about how to evaluate the incoming junior faculty. He insists on the importance of peer review, but is worried about work getting watered down (in his experience peer review has to be balanced with a strong editorial perspective) ... and is even more wary of "clubbiness" in online publications than he is in traditional publishing. He distrusts blogs on principle as mutual admiration societies.

Mayer's Usage Scenarios

He needs:

• Current indexes by subject to articles that have appeared
• Analytic bibliographies or close to it: reviews of the discipline(s) (wow, what an idea! related to various fields his work may encroach on (visual media, games, economics, emerging technologies, whatever)
• Indexes to other journals
• Straightforward, uncomplicated user experience (it just works)

We want him to get:

• Reassurance on peer review processes (achieved by transparency therein)
• The quarterly announcements ... and seek the reuse rights for certain articles, which he'll end up using in class despite himself ...

Design desiderata:

• Transparent rights policy (easy to secure permissions when necessary)
• Transparent peer review process (as much as practical)
• Excellent indexing not only of works published but also of works cited
• Ease of use, uncomplicated UI, degradable bandwidth
• PDF or other format(s) he can distribute further
• capability to pick up RSS (or other XML) feed from other Humanities journals (not nec. "digital" in their scope) w/ contact info, credits, links, indexes, to provide a central access point
  • these can be done by hand or by volunteer if we structure it right (journals may want to be listed)
  • note this does not have to compete directly with commercial indexing (this will be both lighter/shallower, and more current)

- wap

Elizabeth, Private-sector exile

Eliz's Description

Elizabeth considered going to grad school since she loved English and languages; but a bad experience with a French professor turned her off professional academics. She got a job in the PR industry, but couldn't stand that, so she's been trying to work herself back into journalism, partly by way of Internet activism (she writes a blog about the cultural scene in her city).

She still thinks most academic writing is full of hot air (if not worse), but she welcomes stimulating discourse. She reads the NY Times Book Review and dips into litsy magazines when she gets the chance. She likes Camille Paglia but hates Harold Bloom. She moves in artistic circles in the city where she lives, and wants to be current, without being obnoxious about it (she likes sparring with academics she meets at cocktail parties). And if she can learn anything practical about the Internet, well so much the better.

What she's looking for: interesting, entertaining stuff about culture she can download to her PDA and read on the Metro -- or just browse on the web using her trusty Powerbook. In particular, she's interested to know more about what skills will be required to develop, structure and run an online publication of her own.

She is not above participating in threaded discussion groups.

Eliz's Usage Scenarios

She needs:

• Ready synopsis of what's current
• New materials, esp digital art; fun stuff
• Media flexibility / versatility (web, PDA, PDF for print)

We want her to get:

• A sense of the breadth of the field
• Enough "hits" (things she enjoys) to keep her coming back
• Occasionally, something interesting enough to pass to her friends

Design desiderata:

• Page design degradable to low-bandwith media (or provide a low-bandwidth option)
• Variety of navigation techniques including topic-based
• Easy filtering by date, easy forwarding, reader discussions / feedback

- wap

Mark the Lab Guru

Mark's Description

Mark is a grad student in Comp Lit who has a flair for computers and runs the local HumLab? . His job includes the ordinary grind of keeping the computers running, but he also gets to do more interesting things from week to week, like work with students on web-based projects and consult with faculty members more or less formally. While he knows quite a bit about hypertext in the web environment, and about Internet protocols, platforms and related technologies, his real interest is in "VR realms", by which he means not just high-bandwidth VR applications (he has friends in the VR lab who have let him try their gloves and helmets) but also more loosely connected networks of students and teachers working together in both synchronous modes (chat rooms) and asynchronous modes (wikis, bulletin boards and art galleries), on actual datasets in real time (via collaborative writing, whiteboards etc.). He sees this as a kind of "meta-hypertext", in the sense that it's built as a hypertext of hypertexts. But he also means multimedia when he says "text", so things get confusing (that's what his dissertation is about).

Mark understands that there's really interesting work going on in Europe in this area, and would welcome the chance to read about this development, with an eye both to how he could implement such a system on his campus (the practice) and to how people are talking about it (the theory). While he's at it, he certainly wouldn't mind access to a mix of interesting stuff he could share with students, and not just as part of assignments for class (Mark keeps a list of bookmarks for such things) but also more generally: digital art, screen savers, downloadable poetry, little blog pieces with an "email this to a friend" button, whatever.

Oh, and Mark and his friends have strong heads for satire, and like to pass around among themselves whatever they find. If there were a satire channel, he would subscribe.

Mark's Usage Scenarios

He needs:

• Regular and reliable (but not necessarily frequent), attention-getting updates pushed to him (RSS or email) listing the range of current offerings
• Special interest mailing lists, alerts, wiki pages
• Articles that are both practical, and general enough to be useful in the DH classroom -- articles on many levels, for neophytes as well as experts
• Process transparency -- he is both a potential contributor of DHQ content, and can make practical use what what he learns of DHQ (publishing) processes.

We want him to get:

• A sense of confidence and connection
• Access to worldwide communit(ies) (listings and coverage of conferences, e.g., and encouragement to come)
• The idea he might volunteer (as a peer reviewer, contributor, whatever)

Design desiderata:

• Flexible alert mechanisms (email and RSS at least)
• Community links (kept current, thank you!)
• Access to process (submission DTDs and stylesheets, etc.)

- wap

Eilidh McArdle? , Bored Undergraduate

Eilidh’s Description

Eilidh is at a reasonably good university, doing an arts degree in English Literature and History. She is in her second year, and is doing reasonably well, but cant help but think something is missing. She thought the arts would be relevant and exciting, and that she would be doing up to date research, but she is finding the reading lists boring and the assignments a bit samey.

Sometimes she wonders if she has done the wrong degree. She was good at computing at school, and has been doing lots of little projects on the internet since. Keen on modern technology, and addicted to the ‘net, she wishes there was a way to join her two interests. She likes literature and all, but wants to do more that just read books that other people have written all the time. The only use of computing in her coursework is for typing up essays. No-one at her institution seems to be really embracing the ‘net or computational technologies to do anything interesting. Wouldn’t it be cool if there were other people doing stuff out there – but she doesn’t really bother to check, going to the pub with her mates instead.

Eilidh's Usage Scenarios

She needs:

• Introductory articles to exciting developments across the arts
• Lots of links to other resources so she can find out more about things
• Someone to inform her that the thing exists in the first place!

We want her to get:

• A sense of the area as an exciting and relevant place to be, to foster interest, and to encourage her to come back (and to join the community).
• Interesting articles that compliment the traditional humanities
• Occasionally, something interesting to wave under the nose of her professors who don’t use computing that much.

Design desiderata:

• Need to not exclude readers that are not yet at phd level and above, so that the journal can be read by undergrads as well
• Clear navigation and topic delineation so she can see what is there
• An email every now and then to tell her the next issue is out

- Melissa?

Joseph Andrews, Creative IT Developer

Joseph’s Description

Joseph works for a huge international computing company, in the computer games developing section. He is very technical, and loves computers and the internet. He works on various concepts for games, implementation, but part of his job is to keep abreast of new and cool things which are available in the use of computing. The more creative the better.

He goes to some computing conference every year – paid for by his company, of course – and he gets to choose where and when he goes. Its important to the company that people look at different things, and are aware not only of the tecky issues but more conceptual issues behind the use of internet technologies. It doesn’t matter if the stuff is really related to his day to day job – there is a lot of blue sky thinking involved.

He reads a good number of tecky blogs and journals every day, subscribing to most through an RSS feed so he can see quickly if anything interesting comes up.

An overachiever, one of his hobbies is reading all the modern prize winning novels that come out in the year, and even though he is really technical, he likes to think he is well rounded, being interesting in the arts (but secretly wishing they were more like computing).

Joseph's Usage Scenarios

He needs:

• Content of good quality that is unavailable elsewhere
• Succinct and interesting articles and editorials that can spark off ideas
• An introduction to the community and the research in this area

We want him to get:

• A sense that Humanities Computing is just as intellectually challenging as other types of computing
• An introduction to stuff he just wouldn’t have known about otherwise
• Creative ideas from the questions raised by the journal.

Design desiderata:

• Interesting articles, to encourage him to return
• Easy to pull RSS feed from the site
• Works well on a mac. Of course.

- Melissa?