Internet Archives
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Aids 1M+ daily users to transform large content from the Internet Archive, an American digital library, into compelling narratives on the same platform.
Client / Stakeholder - Archive.org
My Role - UX Designer, UX Researcher
Duration - 12 weeks
Key Stakeholders and Project Goals
Stakeholders
Designers from Internet Archive, Proff. and Director of the MA Interaction Design, CSUEB
Goal 1
Making the archive's collections more accessible and user-friendly Allowing users to add their own narratives and context to the items from the archive's collections
Goal 2
Designing a streamlined user interface with intuitive navigation.
Goal 3
Encouraging deeper engagement with the collections and creating new narratives
Goal 4
Supporting scholarly research and learning, and fostering a community of users.
No practical way to contextualize and narrativize the articles collected on the Internet Archive. This made it difficult for users to find relevant content and understand the context of what they were reading.
Defining And Re-defining The Process
The classic Design Thinking model helped us to kick start the project and to put together all the pieces that were needed. We started off with understanding the primary users of the Internet Archives.
Brainstorming and "How Might We" Questions
How Might We...
Research
Conducting research was a crucial step in the design process for the Internet Archive project, as it will help to inform the design decisions and ensure that the solution meets the needs and expectations of users. Some of the research that may be necessary for the project include:
Defining Scope
Once upon a time, the Internet Archive had amassed an incredible collection of digital content, but users found it difficult to navigate and contextualize the content they were interested in.
The Internet Archive project was aimed at developing an integrated digital content tool that would allow users to create scholarly and personal narratives about archive content and contextualize items from the extensive collections available in the archive. The main challenge was to address the issue of there being no practical way to contextualize and narrativize the articles collected on the Internet Archive.
To validate or refute assumptions about user behavior and the effectiveness of the solution we studied user demographics from Internet Archive stats available online, and also tried to gather data on who uses the Internet Archive most and why they use it
Quantitative analysis
To uncover the challenges faced by users when using the Internet Archive and inform the design of the solution, We conducted user interviews with 2 kinds of people.
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People who use internet archives
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People who contextualize from library archives
Qualitative Analysis
The contextual analysis included researching the broader environment in which the Internet Archive operates, including creating task flows and walking through them from Internet Archive's perspective
Contextual Analysis
Story boarding after the user research
After doing a real-time examing and interviewing of people who were using archives to contextualize, we came up with a story board to use it as a reference to understand users of the project.
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Fast Sketches
Quick sketches were made by everyone on the team to see how many different ideas we come up with, and brainstormed through them to understand the feature requirements and to reach a Lo-fi solution.
User Persona and User Journeys
Flow / Information Architecture
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Connecting the existing functionalities to the new feature seamlessly and identifying all points from where the users access the new features.
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Clear labels: Ensuring that labels used for navigation elements are clear and concise, using common terminology and avoiding jargon.
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Consistent design: Maintaining a consistent design across all pages and navigation elements, including font, color scheme, and layout, to make the user experience more cohesive.
Site Map Analysis
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Identified the main sections or categories of the website. This included sections like "Wayback Machine," "Collections," "Books," "Video," etc.
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Analyzed the hierarchy and relationships between different sections.
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Determined how the sections are organized and connected to each other.
