1b.ii The importance of user studies in the humanities
The technical world has been slow realize that users matter, not just in the field of digital humanities, but in broader areas of system design. As long ago as 1971 Hansen called for software engineers to know their user (Hansen, 1971) and for the last thirty years the advantages of software projects whose systems are designed with an eye to the user have been well documented (Shneiderman & Plaisant 2005). Yet some are still inclined to assume that users might not know what they want, and thus it is better not to ask them, in case they answer the wrong question.
If users are integrated into system design, this may still happen late in the process. Typically the user is presented with a prototype that — the designers hope — she will like. This can be of limited use, since at this late stage system designers may be unwilling to make significant alterations. Thus, user input can only have a relatively minor impact, since a radical redesign will cost time, money and enthusiasm, all of which are often in short supply. It is much easier to make minor adjustments, and get the system into production. In scenarios of this sort, if users lose their enthusiasm for the product, it is they and not the designers who tend to be blamed. As a result, the failure rate of software in the commercial world is still staggeringly high (Dalcher & Genus, 2003; Flowers, 1996).
In the humanities, scholars have too often been branded as digitally unskilled or even backward looking, because they have been slower to adopt digital tools than scientists (Warwick, 2004). However, this is a fundamentally flawed approach: when technologies fit well with what scholars do, they will use those technologies (Bates, 2002). Several recent studies of humanities users and digital resources in the UK have found many humanities scholars reporting that they are enthusiastic users of digital resources. However, what they define as digital resources tend overwhelmingly to be generic informational resources, such as library and archive websites, or large online reference collections such as the e-DNB or Literature Online, rather than the kind of digital object which might be compared to a scholarly book (Warwick et al, forthcoming). At present general information resources are better suited to researchers' needs. If we would like future electronic books to be used, they must be equally fit for the purpose. To produce such a resource we must understand what users do, what they like, and what they might like in future.
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