Building a Living Database, Part 2: Gathering and Preparing Content
On the back of our first round of user testing of our flagship resource the Digital Memory Database, Lab Research Fellow Dr Ben Pelling gives an insight into how we approach cataloguing, indexing, preserving and presenting a wealth of digital Holocaust projects from around the world.
Following the launch of our Digital Memory Map on 15 April, to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, we are now focused on the development of the Digital Memory Database.
The Database will expand on the map, providing a regularly-updated resource for professionals working in Holocaust memory and education, their creative partners and academics.
Details of projects and their associated organisations will be complemented, where organisations give us permission, by walkthrough recordings of the digital projects themselves and interviews with those who created, curated and manage them.
It is a major resource unlike any other. It will allow Holocaust memory professionals to learn from existing practice, connect with projects across the globe and let them discover other digital Holocaust memory projects. We hope that it will amplify peripheral stories of the Holocaust and throw into sharp relief where digital Holocaust memory is at risk.
Here is how we have developed the resource so far.
Capturing Content
The walkthroughs cover a wide range of digital projects, including mobile apps, augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR), computer games, 3D modelling, digital archives, online exhibitions and interactive survivor testimony.
When recording, our aim is not to capture a full copy of the project but rather to replicate a real-life visitor experience of the technology, whether of a remote-based service such as a digital archive, or of an on-location app used by visitors, such as an AR app.
By capturing and presenting the walkthroughs this way, the Digital Memory Database will provide a user experience from beginning to end, rather than an exhaustive breakdown of the digital project, often impossible to capture. Find out more about our methodology.
To complement these walkthroughs, we are also undertaking a range of interviews with those involved with digital projects, including curators, developers, designers and educators: the ‘memory-makers’ of today and tomorrow.
The interviews capture personal insights into the creation and production process, alongside thoughts on the challenges that can arise. They are deliberately conversational in tone and allow the interviewer, who will have recorded the project walkthrough, to engage in discussion with the interviewee from their perspective as a user of the project, placing user and creators in dialogue.
This offers an opportunity for creators to reflect on current user experience, which they are often at a distance from in their everyday roles. Captured in this way, interviews and walkthroughs will be crucial resources for those researching or creating similar projects.
The Digital Memory Database was perceived as a really useful resource, and participants were already thinking about how to use it for future projects.
Adding value
As far as possible, the walkthrough recordings are unedited and retain natural interruptions or repetitions to replicate real-life experience.
Likewise, interviews are kept organic and not edited to remove natural pauses or diversions in the conversation. We do however make minor edits to combine clips or protect personal data in the recordings before formatting and uploading them to the database, and to remove any comments at interviewees’ request.
Alongside the audio or video recordings, transcripts are created and synchronised to the sound then used to enhance accessibility, usability and navigation.
We’ve also added ‘chapters’ to the recordings and indexed the content, with relevant keyword tags.
Tags are central to locating the information users want to find. Firstly, they inform the search functions, helping users to get to the exact part of the walkthroughs and interviews most relevant to their enquiries. Secondly, by displaying the tags alongside the recordings, users can quickly access related content. This is particularly helpful in cases where a thematic link may not immediately be obvious from the organisation and project name.
If the tags offer a more computational, modular way into the interviews and walkthroughs, the chapters speak to the structure of the human conversations – demonstrating the core ‘theme’ of a specific section of the dialogue. These chapter themes are the parent terms in our index.
Content Discoverability
The index tags form a core part of the design of the platform – content discoverability. We are creating a database that serves both audiences who are searching for something specific and also those not yet entirely sure of what they need, perhaps looking for inspiration. Therefore, the interface has been designed with three key ways to lead users to content most appropriate to their needs and interests:
- Search is central to the homepage interface as a familiar tool for those who are looking for something specific. A simple search will rapidly list relevant organisations, projects, walkthrough and interview titles. Alongside these, search results will be enhanced via the index tags, guiding users to relevant content that may not immediately be obvious to the user.
- A globe (and potentially alternative maps) provides a visual tool for finding projects by their location, a method similar to our Digital Memory Map. Projects are grouped by their organisations and then located on the map. The map also offers a high-level view on the global distribution of digital Holocaust projects. We are also exploring how to use this function to map the historical places referenced in digital projects. This should make visible where digitalised stories about places are being told and emphasise what regions are underrepresented digitally.
- Browsing areas are being developed to present users with ‘new ways’ to view and think about the content. The curated areas of the database currently in development are: a timeline that organises content by reference to dates or timespan; a section grouping projects by their usage of specific digital media and technologies; and a page where users can browse by the type of organisation behind the projects, for example, memorial sites, museums or academic institutions.
The interviews are deliberately conversational in tone and place user and creators in dialogue.
User-curated collections
The functions above will assist users in finding specific content or help them discover new ideas and inspiration.
However, we also understand that many users will want to preserve a record of the content they find most interesting and potentially present this to colleagues, clients, and collaborators. Therefore, the database is designed to allow for the creation of individual user-curated areas to preserve ‘personal collections’ of database content.
Not only will this include saving links to specific projects, walkthroughs and interviews, but also allow for capturing precisely-defined clips from within the walkthrough and interview recordings. These saved items and clips can then be used to create a ‘presentation board’ of the material with options for adding notes and commentary to the saved items.
User feedback
Our first round of user testing has provided much welcome and detailed feedback on our approach. We performed our alpha-testing with 23 individuals who work across academia, the creative industries, and in Holocaust memory organisations from the US, through Europe and Israel, to Australia.
Key takeaways were:
- The Digital Memory Database was perceived as a really useful resource, and participants across all three sectors were already thinking about how to use it for future projects.
- Some of the search features sparked curiosity, not driven by a specific inquiry; but there was some frustration with the user experience (UX) regarding manipulating the globe feature and the browsing boxes.
- Some participants loved the ability to create snippets, collections and presentations of materials, and to compare across projects in a simultaneous media player. However, not all found these functions or were confident using them. Our planned user guide will provide help.
- In terms of a wish list, participants asked for a personal podcast feature, so they could listen to audio interviews on the go, recommended citations for interviews to incorporate into research papers, an area of the website that provides more information about our methodologies, and a chatbot.
The steps above offer only a brief outline of the early development of our processes for capturing, enhancing, cataloguing and presenting the database content.
As we further build the resource, user testing and feedback has and will continue to be highly valuable. The first round of user testing proved to be insightful and encouraging – it is already being integrated into our design plans as we move towards the beta launch at our international Expo event in June. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all those who attended the session, sharing their time and knowledge with us.
Is your digital project missing from our Digital Holocaust Memory Map? If so, please take a moment to complete our survey about your organisation’s digital projects, strategies and infrastructure here.
Image credit: Title: The oldest records of the ICRC. Author: RomanDeckert. Photo taken and uploaded in the context of the International Archives Week 2020 of Wikimedia Switzerland, Austria and Germany and the Association of Swiss Archivists. This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International via Wikimedia Commons
Want to know more?
Building a Living Database, Part 1: Mapping the World’s Digital Holocaust Memory Projects