UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
SVOBODA DIARIES PROJECT
1 Designer
12+ Months
Digital humanities (DH) is an interdisciplinary field that combines traditional humanistic scholarship with computational tools and digital technologies. Within today’s technology industry, UX is commonly acknowledged as an important driver for user adoption and engagement. However, when it comes to the academic world, good UX has historically been lacking (Gibbs and Owens 2012), and the user is often ignored in the development process (Warwick 2012). While awareness has grown steadily over the past decade, there still exists a “reality gap” between theory and actual practice in DH tool development (Thoden et al. 2017). It is evident that DH still has a long way to go in terms of user experience, which won't be achieved through a single study or any one eye-catching feature. As the design consultant for a long-running DH project at the University of Washington, I helped the team adopt a user-centered approach to the entirety of the product development process, leading to successful re-iterations of the project website.
The Svoboda Diaries Project (SDP) digitizes and makes accessible a collection of personal diaries and travel journals written by the Svoboda family in Baghdad in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This project works to preserve historical texts and images that capture over 40 years of life, politics, and landscape of Iraq under the Ottoman Empire. Researchers from UW and beyond have used our unique resources to study Ottoman public health, British colonial influence, Iraq’s cultural diversity, trade on the Tigris River, and much more.
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Gibbs, F., & Owens, T. (2012). Building better digital humanities tools: Toward broader audiences and user-centered designs. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 6(2). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/6/2/000136/000136.html
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Thoden, K., Stiller, J., Bulatovic, N., Meiners, H.-L., & Boukhelifa, N. (2017). User-centered design practices in digital humanities: Experiences from DARIAH and CENDARI. ABI Technik, 37(1), 2–11. https://doi.org/10.1515/abitech-2017-0002
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Warwick, C. (2012). Studying users in digital humanities. In C. Warwick, M. Terras, & J. Nyhan (Eds.), Digital humanities in practice (pp. 1–22). Facet.
RESEARCH
用戸研究
Personas
From the outset, the SDP team had in mind a diverse selection of potential user types such as researchers, teachers, students and the general public. In order to learn about our prospective users, I led the team in conducting multiple rounds of user interview and survey studies, reaching out to more than 30 students and scholars in related fields of study. From this knowledge base, we defined 4 distinct user personas to guide our development. This is particularly helpful for the project on a strategic level, as student interns have joined and left the team over the years, but our understanding of the users is always rooted in actual user experience.
The Iterative Process
As the design consultant, one of my responsibilities is to introduce key UX concepts to the SDP team. The project resources are developed using a user-centered approach based around iterative design cycles and usability evaluation, which was not common practice in the DH world at all. Before any new website feature goes into development, the team first has to validate if said feature can actually bring positive value to at least one user type.
IDEATION
設計構想
User Scenarios
The SDP web development team mainly consisted of computer science student interns and most had not practiced user-centered design before in their work. To familiarize everyone with thinking from the user's perspective, I get the team to periodically participate in storyboarding exercises. Drawing out different user scenarios visualizes how a person would interact with the product, helping the students understand user emotions, motivations, and real-world environments before building the website features.
Information Architecture
Before any new feature or content gets added to the SDP website, information architecture is first considered to ensure the website’s overall content hierarchy remains intuitive to navigate. Only then are designs fully visualized, first as low-fidelity wireframes and eventually high-fidelity mockups. The team reviews the designs in weekly meetings and together decide on the best solution.
ITERATION
設計迭代
Usability Testing
Once the designs have been sufficiently developed, the team moves to testing where real user feedback help us refine and iterate. Usability testing begins with a set of clear goals the users are tasked to complete. For example, when testing a new interface for the Diary Viewer, users are asked to navigate to a specific diary entry. They are left to explore naturally, with minimal prompts, to see if the design itself is sufficient in completing the task.
Iterative Design
The project does not stop after launch! The SDP website is continuously developed over the years by student interns following iterative cycles, where the research-ideation-testing process is repeated.
The very first website in 2009.
The website before redesign in 2019.
Current website after the latest iteration in 2026.
REFLECTION
経験総結
Digital humanities still remains niche in Ottoman studies, so every project carries with it a greater transformative potential in bridging the digital gap within the discipline (Aladağ 2024). At the same time, DH projects should also strive to bridge the UX gap between scholarly software developers and end users. Beyond the most basic functionalities, creating a positive user experience is what increases the adoption and usage of tools. In doing so, user-centered design can help a digital humanities tool to engage a broader audience.
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Aladağ, F. (2024). Digital humanities and Ottoman studies 2.0. Journal of Digital Islamicate Research, 2(1–2), 63–89. https://doi.org/10.1163/27732363-20241004