Highlights

Presentation

Enabling Exploratory Discovery Through Taxonomy

Taxonomy Boot Camp 2024

Not everything can just be searched. “Aha!” moments deliver value. Exploration leads to insights and surfaces contexts. How do you prepare your content for these user experiences?

Presentation

AI Explanations as Two-Way Experiences, Led by Users

User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) conference

How do we craft designs that "explain" concepts and respond to users’ intent? Can AI identify, elicit and apply relevant user contexts, to help us understand AI outputs? How do explanations become two-way?

Presentation

Menu Mania: What's Wrong With Menus

User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) conference

Menus are ubiquitous in websites and applications of all types. They are critical to accessing the information and actions that users need. In this presentation we share best practices for designing menus.

Presentation

Connecting Art & Archives for Research, Discovery, and Storytelling

MuseumNext (virtual)

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Design for Context have developed a scalable infrastructure supporting integrated information from art, archival, library, historic home collections and exhibitions. Exploring rich relationships reveals a wealth of contexts, perspectives, events, and places. Learn about how the Museum is envisioning the future of its publishing and collections-based storytelling.

Our insights

Presentation

Enabling Exploratory Discovery Through Taxonomy

Taxonomy Boot Camp in Washington, D.C. – November 18, 2024

Duane Degler

Not everything can just be searched. “Aha!” moments deliver value. Exploration leads to insights and surfaces contexts. How do you prepare your content for these user experiences?

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Presentation

Connecting Art & Archives for Research, Discovery, and Storytelling

MuseumNext Digital Collections Conference – October 10, 2022

Duane Degler, Liz Neely

If you’ve ever sat in on a discussion between a curator and an archivist, then you understand the breadth and richness of stories hidden in collections. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has developed a scalable infrastructure supporting integrated information from art, archival, library and historic home collections. Collections Online is a vital shared resource for the Museum and the public. Exploring rich relationships reveals a wealth of contexts, perspectives, events, and places. Learn about how the Museum is envisioning the future of its publishing and collections-based storytelling.

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Presentation

Hello, Meet Hola! Design for Mixed-language Interfaces

UXPA International Conference, Baltimore, MD – September 2, 2021

Duane Degler, Rachel Sengers

A global online user population necessitates the exchange of content from different sources, and the ability to aggregate multilingual content is a critical requirement within many research and business contexts. To effectively reach a global audience and provide access to content in multiple languages, we must structure mixed-language content to support its successful presentation and delivery, and provide innovative designs that facilitate exploration. In this interactive session, we provide real-world examples for doing just that.

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Presentation

Sensemaking as a Learned Experience

Information Architecture Conference – April 28, 2020

Duane Degler

Human ability to “make sense” in both sensory and information experiences is learned, then developed through attention and practice over time. This talk guides IAs, designers, and developers toward creating supportive environments for sensemaking. It outlines the role of language, symbols, structure, and tools that help us make sense of our interactions with information.

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Presentation

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections Website

Webinar, IIIF Museum Community Group – January 7, 2020

Duane Degler, Charlie Butcosk, Rana Chan

In this demonstration of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's collection browse website, launched as a beta in September 2019, Duane Degler and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum's Rana Chan discuss the project background, linked data architecture approach, and the O'Keeffe team's thoughts on the future. This webinar was presented to the Museum interest group of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) community.

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Presentation

The Delicate Art of Facilitating a Content Strategy

Content Strategy DC -- August 29, 2019

Duane Degler

Good facilitation skills are essential for many content strategy tasks and projects. In this session, Duane Degler discussed techniques and approaches to channel the passions and personal goals of each participant, effectively guiding the group towards successful outcomes. Topics covered include learning how to lead discussions, manage personalities, and adapt to the unexpected to benefit both clients and customers.

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Conference

Linked Information and an Enhancement Ecosystem

2019 Information Architecture Conference in Orlando, FL -- March 15, 2019

Duane Degler

In his Information Architecture Conference poster, Duane Degler offers key steps in the theory and practice of managing information as linked data, a framework that supports ongoing enhancement of digital resources, and ways to support cross-silo information resources within, and across, organizations.

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Conference

User and Information Design Considerations for Effective Semantic Search

NFAIS 2019 Annual Conference in Alexandria, VA -- February 14, 2019

Duane Degler

Semantic search seeks to enhance the meaning in content, to more closely align the searcher and the available information resources. This means there is a strong user-centered aspect needed to unlock the benefits. In this NFAIS Conference presentation, Duane Degler explores strategies and considerations for best supporting your users through effective semantic search.

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Conference

Going Global: The Intersection of IA and UX in a Multilingual Environment

IA Summit 2018 Conference in Chicago, IL -- March 25, 2018

Kate Blanch, Rachel Sengers, Janette Shew

In their IA Summit talk, Kate Blanch, Rachel Sengers, and Janette Shew discuss how to structure multilingual content to support its successful presentation and delivery, and how to provide innovative designs that facilitate exploration of that content.

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Conference

Linked Collections and an Enhancement Ecosystem

Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) 2018 Conference in New York, NY -- February 26, 2018

Duane Degler, Kate Blanch

In their ARLIS/NA poster, Duane Degler and Kate Blanch offer key steps in the theory and practice of managing collection data as linked data, a framework that supports ongoing enhancement of digital resources, and ways to discuss your approach toward digital scholarship.

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Presentation

Integrating Taxonomies and Ontologies into Enterprise Search and Browse

Data Harmony User Group in Albuquerque, NM – February 6, 2018

Duane Degler

In this Data Harmony User Group 2018 session, Duane Degler outlines approaches for increasing taxonomy integration into search and browse, thus drawing the greatest value from your taxonomies for your users.

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Presentation

Guerrilla Glue: Making Collaborative Digital Innovation Projects Stick

MCN 2017 Conference, Pittsburgh, PA – November 10, 2017

Duane Degler

In this MCN2017 session, Duane Degler moderates a panel discussing how institutions and projects are using linked data and modern technologies to achieve long-term outcomes for themselves and others.

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Workshop

Designing and Evaluating Powerful, Relevant Search and Browse Experiences

UXPA 2017 Conference, Toronto, Ontario – June 5, 2017

Duane Degler

In this hands-on course, Duane Degler took participants on a journey through the evolving search landscape, with a particular focus on considerations for designing and evaluating the user experience.

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Presentation

Aligning Your Organization's Strategic Direction, Roadmaps, and Technology

ASAE Technology Conference & Expo, Washington, DC - December 14, 2016

Duane Degler

In this session, Duane Degler helps association executives think about how we can better use roadmaps to plan our technology journeys and keep everyone in sync, and provides valuable insights to help coordinate organization and technology goals across parallel initiatives and departments.

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White paper

Understanding How Content Is Used in Enterprise Settings

March 16, 2016

Duane Degler

Enabling knowledge management capabilities through search and discovery can benefit from richer data to learn the ways users think about the information they find and use. This article describes an approach we developed to support enterprise search and content synthesis for case management and research in legal and scientific/academic domains. We use an extremely lightweight (yet powerful) mechanism to bridge the silos and establish a network of data around the use of information.

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Publication

Intelligent Understanding of Content Use

Published in KMWorld Magazine, March 1, 2016

Duane Degler

Using a rich network of data about how people actually use content, we can find insights by integrating it with other enterprise information sources. In this article, Duane Degler explores how it becomes a valuable input to governance processes, at both the organizational and content levels.

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Publication

7 Steps for a More Accessible Association Information Ecosystem

Published by the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), Associations Now Plus - October 5, 2015

Duane Degler, Jacqui Olkin

It can be easy for associations to get buried under all the information they produce and curate. Here are seven steps create an information ecosystem in which resources are accessible and up to date.

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Presentation

User Experience for Content Sites

Web Content Mavens, Washington, DC – January 27, 2015

Duane Degler

Have you seen those beautiful websites that you can't use? Or the super-cool ones that make it hard to actually accomplish your tasks? There's a better way. Duane Degler joined the DC Web Mavens to cover the landscape of understanding goals, users, tasks, content, and, particularly, context.

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Presentation

Blowing Up the Book: Design Challenges for Online Cultural Heritage Information

User Focus, Washington, DC – October 17, 2014

Lesley Humphreys, Neal Johnson

In 2009, The Getty Foundation issued a challenge to eight art museums: translate a scholarly catalog rich with cultural heritage data, images, and interpretation into an online resource that strives to reach beyond the limitations of print in creative and useful ways. "Systematic catalogs" are a time-honored and resource-intensive method of publishing the core art historical data and art research associated with the cultural objects that these institutions hold in public trust. And so the Online Scholarly Catalog Initiative (OSCI) was begun with the goal of "blowing up the book"... not to eliminate or destroy, but rather to expand the utility and audience of these important resources.

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Presentation

Enhancement Ecosystems: Enriching Structured Content with User Tagging and Annotation

Semantic Technology & Business Conference, New York, NY – October 2, 2013

Duane Degler, Thomas Vander Wal

Formal and informal metadata, classification and descriptions play a significant role in the quality of user experience with content and search. This talk describes “enhancement ecosystems” involving users and content experts.

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Presentation

Supporting Relevance for Users – A Design Challenge

Semantic Technology & Business Conference, San Francisco, CA – June 3, 2013

Duane Degler

Presenting “related” content can unfortunately be perceived by users as not relevant to their current needs, particularly in complex knowledge work and interactive applications. At risk is a loss of credibility, which can weaken trust in the application or underlying information, which in turn colors their ongoing experience with an application. Relevance algorithms have gotten more sophisticated, providing designers and developers with useful tools. But from a user experience perspective, relevance is often perceived in the context of a user’s immediate tasks and goals, as much (or more) than it is associated with their prior actions and patterns from similar users.

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Presentation

Semantics, Search, and Findability

Web CMS and Semantic Web Meetups, Washington, D.C. – September 28, 2010

Duane Degler

Search is changing - we see it in public search and particularly what is possible with individual site searching. But it's more than search — findability is changing! Content relationships and linking, more structure and metadata, richer designs. Semantic Web concepts and techniques are becoming practical, finding their way into authoring tools and site designs. How do we take advantage of this? This is a brief overview of findability and search with a semantic twist, with examples and demos.

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Presentation

Achieving Business Value by Integrating Tasks, Topics and Content

Writers of User Assistance conference, Portland, OR – March 18, 2008

Duane Degler

“The shortest distance between two points is a relevant keyword.” When users need information, the most direct path returns them to their task as quickly as possible with the knowledge needed to be successful. This requires us to design and write with an understanding of the user's context, task, and need. We then reduce seeking time by carefully defining the 'glue' between applications and supporting information. In this paper, I discuss some 'big picture' ideas for User Assistance practices: understanding the user's context, identifying relevant keywords, and integrating applications and content using techniques from the Semantic Web and Topic Maps.

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Publication

Policy Content at SSA: Using XML and Semantic Metadata

XML2004 conference, Washington, DC – November 17, 2004

Duane Degler, Terry Hynes

A new content management and delivery system has been growing over the past years at SSA. From a content perspective, users have been asking for “simple answers, with all supporting information, relevant to my situation.” From an organizational perspective, the role of content is increasingly seen as integrated with transactional systems in order to sustain quality service delivery in an increasingly complex business environment. From a technology perspective, the use of emerging tools based on XML and semantic technologies provides opportunities for simpler systems that control content maintenance more effectively, improve integration, provide easier content access, and allow migration as systems evolve over time. This case study shows the application and discusses design considerations.

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Publication

Maintaining Ontology Implementations: The Value of Listening

Extreme Markup conference, Montreal, Quebec, Canada – August 2004

Duane Degler, Renee Lewis

It's hard to argue against the concepts of self-describing data, contextual interfaces, and richer metadata for content that eventually will make up the Semantic Web. However, it is easy to imagine semantic environments suffering from the same challenges that many content management system implementations and the Web itself suffer from: the preoccupation with data could easily leave us drowning in it. This paper focuses on approaches being explored to promote feedback and user involvement for the maintenance of semantic representations, to ensure they remain useful and current.

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Publication

Knowledge Management in Pursuit of Performance: The Challenge of Context

Performance Improvement, ISPI, 39(6) – July 2000

Duane Degler, Lisa Battle

Much of the current focus on knowledge management is on the acquisition and storage of knowledge resources. Unfortunately, because most knowledge management solutions are developed to stand alone, the context of a person’s need for information when using business applications is often left to the individual. This article discusses ways to merge the best practices of knowledge management and performance support, so that knowledge can be integrated more seamlessly within working applications, and applications can be used to solicit knowledge as a byproduct of people’s work.

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