Followup to Digital Library Hunt Library Focus Group

From WolfWikis

workspace to followup on the digital library focus group with DEGW

Update from Feb 20-21 Focus Groups

• Q: Student scenarios? Types of students?

• Q: What are the specialized spaces in the Hybrid model? How many spaces/seats in each of those?

User Scenarios

User Technologies scenario (Maurice's, with some addition from Lisa and borrowed ideas from Tito)

[Based on four primary technologies likely to be well developed in 2012: ultra small projectors for portable devices, compact multi-terabyte storage, "Surface" touch computing, and grid computing. If you haven't seen Surface or similar technologies in action, check out: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/]

A. has been out in the field collecting snapshots and movies on his cell phone. He walks into the library and sees two other members of his class who he is working on a project with and wants to show them the footage he has collected. They look around the Commons and see a free sunken area where they can pull over extra chairs. They dim the lights in the few feet around the chairs and turn a polarized glass partition opaque (or pull an opaque mesh screen from the furniture, etc) so that A. can use it to project pictures from his cell phone. Nearby, B. is sitting with a laptop that has a massive data set that he brought in on a compact multi-terrabyte drive. He has been sitting there for several hours, and the space was his until A. came in. The disruption of the group work nearby is breaking his concentration, so he activates a cone of white noise to give himself some privacy. He has all the data in place, but is short on processing power, so he borrows free clock cycles from the libraries grid computing network, which is capturing unused processing power from idle desktop computers in the Commons. B. is stuck on a particularly tricky data transformation, so he IMs the GIS librarian on the other side of the Commons for help, and gets assistance by screen sharing to his laptop. Meanwhile A. and his group have decided what footage to use for their project. A. puts his cell phone down on a Surface touch computing table and C. (another member of his group) puts his iPod on it as well. Both devices spill out their files onto the touch surface to be manipulated by hand. Also mounted on the Surface tabletop is a network share with freely available images from the Library's special collections. The students sort the images out on the table top for their presentation, group the ones they would like to use, and shuffle them over the Surface tabletop to C.'s iPod. The group breaks up and B., relieved, turns off the white noise cone. Done with his data manipulation, he uploads some of his finished map plots to a shared GIS workspace that also feeds display boards in the Commons, using a digital signature in the file to point to the original data set where it sits on campus servers. (myork)

Idea: The Groupwork Corridor

The Technology Adoption Lifecycle theory states that for any given technology, the adoption of the technology by a population follows a predictable distribution pattern. Wouldn't it be nice to design the new library space with this in mind? I am imagining a corridor for informal group work consisting of workspaces with varying degrees of technology. On one end of the corridor you have basic group work tools: a small table, a couple of chairs and a large whiteboard surface. These are technologies that even technology "laggards" are comfortable with. You put out 6 areas configured this way. But at the other end of the corridor you outfit the workspaces with some technology designed to enhance group productivity, perhaps a large screen display that students can plug a laptop in. You configure 3 spaces this way. At the very end you put out something experimental... perhaps a workspace with a giant screen that can support teleconferencing, or shared desktops, or some specialized collaboration tool. You start with this then watch what happens. If some of the new technology catches on, people find it useful, you may choose to increase the number of workspaces in this configuration. Or if the new technology has a limited audience you don't waste resources buying equipment that no one will use. Perhaps 20 years from now only 2 of the 10 workspaces would have whiteboards. This model could help balance the right mix of technology based on use, and would help encourage the use of innovative tools for groupwork. We want to avoid the scenario of outfitting the library with niche technologies that are purchased because they seem cool at the time, but don't see much usage because they not very useful. (tsierra)

Grab N' Go Computing/Furniture

I keep getting stuck on the idea of grab n' go computing vs. fixed or vendable/loanable computing. For example building computing into highly mobile chairs (rolling or lightweight carryable, such as gaming rockers, or even chairs/devices that follow you or come to you). Users can connect their lite devices with the chair and the chair knows how to talk to the various display devices, storage, etc., probably also providing its own personal display/entry devices. re: chairs that follow you, Kristin sent me this link: http://www.botjunkie.com/2007/12/11/take-a-seat-on-a-robot-chair/ Use of intelligent floor lighting/signalling could help with directional issues (finding study group, directions to a specific place, etc.) Would be nice to leave extra overhead space for unforeseen uses. (smorris)

Making Connections

We know that students come to the library to meet up with friends and classmates to work together. We hear that they would like to do that in a more serendipitous way, for instance, to be able to meet up with somebody they didn't plan to meet or don't even necessarily know. How can the space or technologies in the space facilitate that? Assuming more courses in the future will be filmed, students may be watching a lecture on a big screen and find each other that way. The library is creating a Facebook app to help students find each other, but what if there was a physical representation of that? A touch/write screen near the entrance that anybody could write anything on?

An analogous problem that faculty have identified is the desire to find people at the university working on the same, or similar, problems as they are. Is there some way for the Hunt library to "showcase" work being done in such a way that faculty would serendipitously find out about things of interest to them?

Links

Automated Retrieval System (ARS) http://library.sonoma.edu/about/ars.html