Sessions

There is a lot to think about when redesigning any application, but what if your application was a 30-year-old project to transcribe over a hundred years worth of art sales receipts? What if you want to connect these receipts to the people, places, and objects they describe? How do you present this messy event-based data that has gaps and overlaps in time? What if your users have been using this application for decades? Won’t someone think of the users?!

This is the task the Getty is currently undertaking with their remodel of the Getty Provenance Index, bringing together 6 databases and 1.7 million records from auction catalogs and art dealer inventories into a single, modern interface using linked data. UX designer Kristen Carter is going boldly forward where not many have gone before: designing a usable interface for a network of information about art, people, documents, and events.

Turning a massive, tangled, network graph into a familiar and friendly UI was no easy task.
But over the course of 3 years of sifting through user research, trial and error, and a gross amount of coffee, the answer slowly presented itself: the compromise between data that wants to be Facebook and users who want a card catalog.

In this session you will learn:

• How to design a UI for event-based data when everything is an event
• What works and what doesn’t when displaying user-friendly Linked Open Data
• Tools and methodologies for designing a UI when you can’t crib off other people