Keep up-to-date with the project and working group activities.

Project Scope

ArchivesSpace has engaged The Cherry Hill Company to provide assessment, project management, and design services to the ArchivesSpace program staff and community in support of enhancing the public interface of the ArchivesSpace software application.  As part of this effort, a members-only working group has been convened to work closely with the design firm and program staff to ensure that requirements, priorities, testing, and acceptance of the work product meets member needs and expectations. 

The primary deliverables of this project include:

1. Establishment of an overall graphic style and interaction design for the public interface and definition of a set of supporting guidelines.
2. Identification of areas and/or elements of the public interface that could be modified or enhanced in order to improve usability and provide greater ease of interaction for public users of the application
3. Development of a set of enhancements to the core code base (based on #2 above and led by Brian Hoffman)
4. Development of plugins (As possible and in collaboration with additional development partners to be determined)

Working Group Scope

The Public Interface Enhancements Working Group will:

• Review, in order to de-dupe and enhance where necessary, the issues that have been submitted by the community since alpha testing of the ArchivesSpace application began and that now reside in JIRA. The goal of the review is to ensure that all of the issues are defined as clearly as possible, that they are organized into a cohesive narrative of requirements, and that they are prioritized based on member need and use within the coming six month period.
• Ensure that all reports submitted by members that specifically call out their concerns, needs, and desires with regard to the public interface are properly represented and integrated into the issues noted above.
• Ensure that a full set of user stories and use cases are provided within JIRA that represent the breadth and depth of member information ecologies and work environments.
• Work directly with the design firm for the duration of the project (June – December 2015 on a regular schedule to be determined in collaboration with the selected firm).
• Review and test interaction designs and provide feedback.
• Communicate with members and serve as advisors to the process on behalf of the full membership.

Working Group Members

Mark Custer, Chair

• Susan C. Pyzynski, Associate Librarian for Technical Services, Houghton Library, Harvard Universiy
• Cate Putrirskis, Special Collections Processing Coordinator, Ohio State University Libraries - Special Collections Description & Access
• Linda Hocking, Curator of Library and Archives, Litchfield Historical Society
• Scott Schwartz, Director of the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, Archivist for Music and Fine Arts and Associate Professor of Library and Archives Administration, University of Illinois
• Susan Luftschein, Archival and Metadata Librarian, USC Libraries and Special Collections, University of Southern California

• Cory Nimer, University Archivist, Brigham Young University

• Maura Carbone, Digital Initiatives Librarian, Brandeis University

• Krista Ferrante, MITRE Corporate Archivist

• Matt Francis, Archivist for Collection Management, Special Collections Library, Penn State University

• Claryn Spies, Public Services, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library

• Mariella Soprano, Senior Archivist for Collection Management, Calltech Archives & Special Collections
• Elisa Piccio, Caltech Archives & Special Collections
• Dara Flinn, Archivist/Special Collections Librarian, Woodson Research Center, Rice University
• Jessica Dowd Crouch, Archivist, Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, Ernest F. Hollings Library

ArchivesSpace Team Participants

• Brian Hoffman, ArchivesSpace Developer
• Angela Spinazzè, Senior Director of Collaborative Programs, LYRASIS

The Cherry Hill Company

• Rain Michaels, User Interface Designer/Project Manager
• Tommy Keswick, Developer
• Jungleen Bae, Designer
• Cary Gordon, Founder

As of December 21, 2015, the final report for Phase I of this project has been uploaded here: 

http://cherryhill.github.io/aspace_pui/index.html

This includes an overview, along with detailed functional wireframes and design comps.

Support Documents

Public Interface Specification 2011

Project Phases

This section describes the three phases of the project that will lead up to the release of the new, enhanced version of the ArchivesSpace Public User Interface.

Phase 1 (March - December 2015):

The first phase of the project ended December 2015. Cherry Hill produced the first two deliverables of this project, as described in the Project Scope section at the top of this page. Additionally, the working group produced a set of user personas that have guided the project; established default terms for labels in the PUI; conducted three usability tests of the original ASpace PUI, to serve as a baseline for future developents; and created a test corpus of archival description, which will be used in the next phase, once development of the new Public User Interface commences.

Phase 2 (January - ??? 2016):

The second phase of the project started in early 2016. The second phase is the development phase, which is being led by Brian Hoffman. In order to test new releases of the interface, a subset of the former working group (Maura Carbone, Mark Custer, Cory Nimer, Susan Pyzynski, and Scott Schwartz) agreed to continue their work on the project by testing new releases with each monthly sprint.

It is expect that this phase of the project will also include an additional round of usability tests, as well as an accessibility audit.

All testing is currently taking place at a password-protected site, with data from the test corpus. This site is updated nightly with new code releases, which include changes to the staff interface.

This phase of the project will continue until the first candidate release of the new PUI is distributed.

Phase 3:

During the third phase of the project, the release candidate of the new PUI will be installed on the sandbox ArchivesSpace site. Additional testing and feedback will be requested from all users of the ArchivesSpace software. Short screencasts that introduce and demonstrate new features will also be distributed.  

The third phase will conclude whenever the release date for the new PUI has been selected and communicated to the membership community.