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:
The Public Interface Enhancements Working Group will:
Mark Custer, Chair
Cory Nimer, University Archivist, Brigham Young University
Maura Carbone, Digital Initiatives Librarian, Brandeis University
Matt Francis, Archivist for Collection Management, Special Collections Library, Penn State University
Claryn Spies, Public Services, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library
ArchivesSpace Team Participants
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.
Public Interface Specification 2011
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.
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.
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 expected 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.
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.