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Dataverse
ROLE
Web Designer + Developer
DATE
2008-21
Helping a global community of academic institutions and researchers share, archive, cite, access, and explore research data.
Dataverse is an open source software platform for sharing, finding, citing, and preserving research data, developed at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University.
Study Page, Version 2.1
An example of a Dataverse customized with HTML, CSS styling of the website of our department head and university professor, Gary King ─ the data science researcher responsible for creating Dataverse as a research project at IQSS. Customization was a major selling point, as researchers want to maintain recognition for their work, copying the branding to Dataverse allowed for a more seamless UX when navigating from personal external sites to datasets archived on Dataverse.
Dataset Page, Version 4.0
The UI was rebuilt from top to bottom with Version 4. This provided a unique opportunity to rethink all of the workflows and design elements. We started sketching workflows at the whiteboard, refining with many, many sticky notes, which lead to paper prototypes, that we iterated on with feedback from our user community that spanned from department stakeholders, to sysadmins, to researchers and students.
User Testing with Dynamic Prototypes, Version 4.0
Once we had initial workflows built with mostly functioning dynamic components, we held user tests over whichever video call, screen sharing or recording app the user had available. We collected user feedback on the new UI and UX as quickly as possible, to confirm initial concepts.
Map Data
External tools we developed like Geoconnect, utilized the Bootstrap-based Dataverse design style guide for the UI, and were not required to be built with JavaServer Faces (JSF), like the Dataverse. This app was built with Django and Python, others used content management systems like Drupal. It was very common that we worked with data science researchers around the world who would create tools to connect to Dataverse, providing new ways to preview, visualize and explore the data in our archive.
User Testing with Lo-fi Mockups, Version 5.0
Version 5.0 marked another major UI redesign effort, to improve responsiveness, accessibility and increase scalability to support new features on the road map. User testing early in the design process with stakeholders and community members, using lo-fi mockups, make it easy to capture layouts and workflows in a PDF that has links to various pages, as the button and dropdown menu are in this mockup. These were presented at the 2018 Dataverse Community Meeting, which is held every year at Harvard University, attracting researchers and developers from around the world.
GitHub Issues Feature Requests, Version 5.0
Each mockup might take dozens of individual bug fixes and user requests into consideration. With our agile development process, individual issues are worked on in “small chunks”, while any higher-level issues, like redesigning an entire page, might be closed once development on these small issues has begun.
User Feedback Mockups, Version 5.0
Designs are iterated after user testing and feedback from stakeholders. Notes are discussed and changes implemented, to be reviewed again and confirmed with users.
Responsive Layout
Bootstrap’s layout grid system was used to improve responsiveness and access to all our users. Used custom CSS (h/t Eric Meyer at An Event Apart, Boston) during front-end development to apply borders to containers, making it a lot easier to see how content responds to various container (or device) sizes. Layout improvements benefited both human user accessibility, as well as machine readability, improving search results in Google’s Dataset Search.
Accessibility Compliance
Audited our application with accessibility checker tools Siteimprove and WAVE. New features were checked against WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards. Advocated for improvements working with the project manager and development to prioritize efforts in team sprints. My role as Digital Accessibility Liaison for Faculty of Arts and Sciences, providing policy and technical support to faculty and staff, provided me access to resources and training with the Digital Accessibility Services (DAS) team at Harvard.
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