Designing & Co-Designing Experiences for Digital Collections

This Towards a National Collection (TaNC) webinar provides a platform for researchers from our Unpath’d Waters and Our Heritage, Our Stories Discovery Projects to share unique insights into co-designing virtual reality environments, transcribing co-design, working with community generated digital content (CGDC) and more.

• Jonathan Combey, Royal Museums Greenwich: To err is human: Transcription accuracy in co-design
• Ashleigh Hawkins, The National Archives: The UK General Data Protection Regulation and the re-use of community generated digital content (CGDC): Capturing the people of today in the cultural heritage data of tomorrow
• Scott Carballo, Glasgow School of Art: Unpath’d Waters: The co-design of the Unpath Navigator

Jonathan Combey will open the webinar with a presentation on transcription accuracy in co-design processes, exploring for example which information can be gained from detailing pauses, hesitations, and repetitions. Ashleigh Hawkins will discuss the inclusion of personal data in community generated digital content (CGDC) and the challenges this presents to re-use and aggregation of CGDC within the current legal framework. Scott Carballo will talk about the Unpath Navigator – an immersive virtual reality system which allows the exploration of multimodal maritime datasets and how the technical development of this resource has been informed by an extensive co-design process with three target audiences. The session will conclude with Q&As.

Full abstracts

Jonathan Combey: To err is human: Transcription accuracy in co-design

The co-design sessions of Unpath’d Waters has produced over 100,000 words of transcription. While often perceived and used as a supplement for an audio recording, transcripts can be important pieces of scholarship that require interpretation and interrogation. Both the purpose of the transcript and the detail in which it is recorded can help reveal further information such as hidden oralities and interjections that are often obscured from text for the purpose of readability. When utilising transcripts the inclusion of notes and context can help to better communicate its content’s findings.

Ashleigh Hawkins: The UK General Data Protection Regulation and the re-use of community generated digital content (CGDC): Capturing the people of today in the cultural heritage data of tomorrow

Information relating to identifiable individuals, both those from antiquity and those alive today, is a vital element of the rich and diverse landscape of community generated digital content (CGDC). Research into more than 100 community groups has established that while the inclusion of this personal data in CGDC is commonplace, the level of risk associated with the re-use of such CGDC varies. This presentation will consider the challenges of re-using and aggregating CGDC containing personal data in accordance with UK data protection regulation as part of the Our Heritage, Our Stories Project.

Scott Carballo: Unpath’d Waters: The co-design of the Unpath Navigator

In this webinar, I will present on the co-design process with each of our three test groups and how it has influenced the technical development of our virtual reality experience. Specifically, how it has directed our decision-making process with regard to three key areas: accessibility for visual impairment, research functionality and data representation, and inclusion of historical narratives, or ‘voyages’, designed to engage and inform the public.