Adaptive Systems: Bridging the Gap UCLAPacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies

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Adaptive Systems Bridging the GapUCLA/Pacific
Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies

• Howard Besser
• UCLA School of Education Information
• http//www.newliteracies.gseis.ucla.edu/
• http//www.gseis.ucla.edu/howard

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Outline

• The Various Disparities
• The UCLA/Pacbell Initiative
• Adaptive Systems

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The Various Disparities

• Technology (including closeness, versions, and
  bandwidth)
• Access to Content-
• Intelligent Effective Use-
• info lit
• discovery vs. consumption
• delivery systems geared to users with a
  particular bkgrnd capability

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Access to Contentmajor issues

• Licensing and the effect on walk-ins
• Authentication systems and granularity
• IP restrictions
• Best-sellers will be first digitized and
  easiest to obtain

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Access to Contentmajor implications

• Favoring of content that is most easily
  accessible
• Economics will favor organizations with more
  resources for digitizing, metadata creation,
  aggregation, user interfaces
• Users will favor particular content sources
• wont search lots of diff sources if cant use
  the images seamlessly
• Easily accessible info will get used often, while
  hard to access info will be marginalized

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UCLA/Pacific Bell Initiative for 21st Century
Literacies-

• The Problem and Issues
• Project Dates Staff
• The User
• Summit
• Policy
• Design Issues Adaptive Systems

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21st Century Literacies

• Information Literacy
• Visual Literacy
• Media Literacy
• Cultural Literacy
• ...

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The Problem and Issues

• If we solve Access Problem (technology,
  bandwidth, training), other impediments to an
  informed citizenry still remain
• Need critical evaluation of resources
  (reliability, authoritativeness, thoroughness,
  recency)
• Need skills to pare down from information
  overload
• Need critical thinking skills
• Need to deal with different users having
  different backgrounds and capabilities

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Project Dates Staff

• Summer 2000-Dec 2001
• 1 million
• Co-Directed by Aimée Dorr and Howard Besser
• October 21, 2000 Summit (planning involved 20
  people from Pacbell UCLA)
• Rest of project primarily UCLA
• Coordinator Sheila Afnan-Manns (afnanmanns_at_gseis.u
  cla.edu)

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The User

• Evaluative bibliography of literature and
  projects
• Analysis of what we know thusfar from several
  different perspectives (curriculum design,
  library services, critical theory, information
  retrieval, user-centered design, )
• Examining model curriculum

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Summit (1/2)Oct 21, 2000

• Bring widespread attention to the underlying
  issues
• 360 professionals from education, librarianship,
  public policy, and industry
• 15 Higher Ed faculty, administrators, librarians
• 28 K-12 teachers, principals, superintendents
• 14 public and K-12 librarians
• 33 future practitioners, policy makers,
  librarians, educators
• 8 business community
• 3 government (governors office, state dept of
  Educ, )

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Summit (2/2)Oct 21, 2000

• Snappy video to highlight the problems (25
  unsolicited requests to show video in 1st month
  after Summit)
• Over 2 dozen exhibits and poster sessions
  explaining related projects throughout the
  country
• Guest speakers (Alan Kay, Marcia Bates, Pat
  Breivik, Kathleen Tyner, Anna Deavere Smith, Tal
  Finney)

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Policy

• information literacy standards
• issues related to the "Digital Divide
• privacy and ownership concerns
• ...

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Design Issues

• Examine factors that inhibit efficient and
  effective use of an information system
• Examine how best to design systems to match the
  literacy levels, technological capabilities, and
  other characteristics of the user
• Principles, Practices, and Guidelines for Good
  Design for Facilitating Access (screen design,
  searching navigation, metadata description,
  info structures organization, usability
  testing, )
• Build Adaptive Systems-

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Bad Type
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Fonts/Colors/Backgrounds
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Colors Fonts
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Background Color D9D900
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Width Problems
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Cluttered Choices
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Clutter
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Icons
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Background Menu Bars
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Meta Tags
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Make User Change Browser
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Contact Information
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Our Resources Website
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Good Design Principles

• Promote good design practices throughout the
  Design community
• Get the Design community to sign on to a set of
  Principles for Good Design-
• Create Guides Best Practices Documents-

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Possible Good Design Principles

• Dont disenfranchise users who have slow
  processors, older browsers, low bandwidth, visual
  impairment, etc.
• Clearly note the recency of any information
  resource
• Make sure that a user can easily determine what
  organization/agency created or contributed to an
  information resource

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Important Dimensions toGood Design Principles

• screen design
• searching navigation
• metadata description
• info structures organization
• usability testing

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Our Resources related toGood Design Principles

• Screen Design - The visual design of the screen
  can impact usability. Color, font, the use of
  images, and layout of screen elements are
  essential design components.
• Searching and Navigation - Ease of navigation and
  search/browsing options are critical components
  of usability.
• Metadata and Description - Good metadata and site
  description will help users find the appropriate
  website.
• Information Structures and Organization - How
  information is organized and categorized shapes
  access. For systems with an underlying searchable
  database, the structure of the database itself
  will determine the outcome of searches.
• Usability Testing - Includes resources on how to
  evaluate sites and on testing for usability.

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Build Adaptive Systems

• Build Systems that adapt the same back-end
  information to different user profiles (different
  knowledge bases, different technical
  capabilities, different cognitive structures)
• User profiles may include advanced researcher in
  a particular subject area, general undergraduate
  student, high school student,
• Different profiles will need different user
  interfaces, navigation, searching vocabulary,
  file formats and sizes, ...

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• Design
• User Interface
• Navigation
• Browse
• Search
• Efficient bandwidth use

User Profiles Combination of dimensions and
purpose

• Content
• Mark-up
• Various metadata
• Protection features

knowledge base
Technological capibilities

• Design functional examples
• Differing screen arrangements
• Differing functional options
• Vocabulary mapping
• Diminishing image size

Age
language/culture
Dimensions

• Purpose
• Casual user
• K12 student, lifelong learner
• Information/hobby
• Scholar/preservation
• Business
• (Colorado Dig Proj)
• Cultural tourist
• Casual user
• Scholar
• (CIMI)

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Adaptive Systemswhat theyll do

• Can serve different audiences (general public,
  purposeful inquirer cultural tourist, domain
  specialist)
• Each profile audience will
• see a level of discourse addressed to them
• experience a user interface appropriate to their
  profile
• use vocabulary they are familiar with
• Yet all will be using the same back-end set of
  information

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Adaptive Systemshow theyll work

• Passing search terms through a thesaurus to map
  specialist vocabulary to/from vernacular
• Adapting vocabulary from curatorial language into
  common discourse development of markup
  extensions to EAD/CIMI/CIDOC to allow description
  for different audiences
• In general, specialized users will experience
  more text-based interfaces, while general users
  will experience more graphic/visual interfaces

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Adaptive Systemsdevelopment plan

• Research and experimentation
• Profile 5-10 different user communities
• Mechanize 2-3 different information delivery
  systems
• Demonstrate the utility of this approach (proof
  of concept) for further research and design

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What does this all mean forInfo Professionals?

• Good set of Design Guidelines
• Feasibility of Adaptive Systems that deliver the
  same back-end info tailored to different sets of
  user needs

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Adaptive Systems Bridging the GapUCLA/Pacific
Bell Initiative for 21st Century Literacies

• Howard Besser
• UCLA School of Education Information
• http//www.newliteracies.gseis.ucla.edu/
• http//www.gseis.ucla.edu/howard/
• The Shape of the 21st Century Library, in Milton
  Wolf et. al. (eds.), Information Imagineering
  Meeting at the Interface, Chicago American
  Library Association, 1998 pages 133-146
• From Internet to Information Superhighway, in
  James Brook and Iain A. Boal (eds.), Resisting
  the Virtual Life The Culture and Politics of
  Information, San Francisco City Lights, 1995,
  pages 59-70