The Iterative Design and Evaluation Approach for a Socially-aware Search and Retrieval Application for Digital Archiving

Designing user interfaces involves several iterations for usability design and evaluation as well as incremental functionality integration and testing. This paper reports on the methodological approach for the design and implementation of an application that is used for search and retrieval of sociallyaware digital content. It presents the archivist view of professional media organizations and the specific requirements for successful retrieval of content. The content derived from the social media analysis is enormous and appropriate actions need to be taken to avoid irrelevant and/or repeated social information in the displayed results as well as overinformation. The archivist feedback reveals the way humans address the social information as presented in the form of metadata along with the archived raw content and how this drives the design of a dedicated search and retrieval application. Keywords-search and retrieval user interfaces; social network information; archiving; preservation; user interface design; usability