Enable researchers to broaden the knowledge boundary by exploring the unique knowledge map formed by their own social networking.
Problem Statement
The Hoffmann Centre's online digital library contains a large number of articles, videos, interactive charts, conferences, etc. This UX design project aims to navigate people find new content beneficial to their research work in this complex archive, and also have fun in content exploration.
My Role and Skills
User Research
User Flow and Wireframes
Creative Coding (Processing)
User Interface Design
Timeline and Teams
Jialing, Faye, Zoe at Applied Works
December 2019 - Apr 2020
Project Output
Based on user research, we find people can be a new medium for academic researchers to find new content. So we create a feature called 'research explorer', in this knowledge map landscape, people can find authors who connect most with their research field, and get opportunities to network with the author, also links to more content based on he/she.
This feature is launched online in 2020 and still helps people have fun in content exploration now.
Discover
01 Literature review: Social networks contribute to online serendipity
Notion 1
In modeling social networks, a node represents a single individual. A hub is a component of a network with a high-degree node. connections between nodes represent relationships between individuals.
Notion 2
Strong ties are characterized as deep affinity, for example, family, friends, or colleagues.
Weak ties, in contrast, might be nodding acquaintances, or strangers with a common cultural background.
Notion 3
Power of weak ties
Weak ties play an important role in many social activities. Broaden people’s information boundaries - get access to heterogeneous information and more efficient information acquisition.
Discover
02 Experiments and interview: how people gain knowledge in social-networking?
Experiment 1:
We give participants two tasks in which they need to seek answers by asking people instead of using search engines.
Findings: They choose the person based on three dimensions. Expertness, knowledge, familiarity.
Experiment 2:
We observe people spread the information 'there is free food in a corner' to strangers.
Findings: non-verbal communication (physical evidence and facial expression) plays an important role.
Experiment 3:
We form a micro-network containing both strong and weak ties and ask participants to piece together the word from fragment information.
Findings: the factors drive knowledge-seeking behaviours:
- drive by the atmosphere
- drive by familiarity
- drive by the relative accessibility
Discover
03 Field Observation:
We are invited to an internal meeting held in Chatham House and make observations on how people gain knowledge in real situations. By observation, we find same background in knowledge also contributes to offline socializing.
Discover
04 Thinking Aloud: people's mental models on knowledge maps
By experiment, we find knowledge hierarchy is an important factor. The more time people spend in a research field, the smaller their focus point granularity will become.
Key Findings
Key Findings 1
Key Findings 2
Social networks could be a chance to connect and navigate contents
Using people as a medium to explore information could be a new way for inter-connectedness
People’s mental mode on the ‘Knowledge map’ contains information hierarchies. The more people get exploration on one topic, the smaller granularity of information will people focus on.
How might we
Build a “knowledge map” considering People as Connections to form new paths for exploring information
At first, we focus on how to involve people in the knowledge map but ignore how people conceive the 'knowledge map' itself. the structure of this version's knowledge map is flat.
After thinking aloud, we involve hierarchy in the information landscape. With topics, tags, and articles becoming smaller and more focused. An identical author will show up when people arrive at a certain info level.
Develop
01 User Journey Map
We crafted a full user journey map that targets key audiences for Chatham House digital library, it begins from very
start point when users start exploring the knowledge map for articles they want to read and ends with meeting authors and academic fellows in offline events to gain more lively information.
Develop
03 User Flow
By depicting the whole process, we can identify how the user is navigating and see if they meet their needs.
Basically speaking, we add a research explorer called 'knowledge map', people can roam around the knowledge map with the guidance of identical authors in this field and find authors who share the same interest with them. The author is under certain academic topics, people can go to the content library by clicking the topics.
Develop
04 Wireframes
Based on user flow, we make wireframes to clarify the interface design and get feedback from our clients.
Deliver
01 Final designs
Key feature 1: Form your own knowledge maps
Select field you are interested in
More topics show up as your interest increase
Key feature 2: Find articles to read from knowledge map
Recommendation the key author of related fields
Link to more contents based on people you are interesed in
Key feature 3: Link to more content with online serendipity
More articles from the author, find more people and events where you have networking opportunities.
Deliver
02 Visual Design
1
Knowledge Map
3
View identical articles of the people who show up
2
Find people who are most influential in interesting fields
Personal Publications List
Academic Networking
Search function in knowledge map
Event detail page
View the events people go to
Content Library
View the article find in content library
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7
9
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Deliver
03 Project achivements
The feedback we received from Chatham House was overwhelmingly positive! They were particularly impressed with how we gained insights from research and praised the way we presented insight into interface design.
They take our proposal into consideration. Since then till now, our clients have set their UX strategy as enhancing social networking function in their web and navigation content by author, author's network🙌.