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Usability evaluation of an open-source environmental monitoring data dashboard for archivists

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Abstract

Cultural heritage archives engage in monitoring of environmental condition data, typically by employing “datalogger” devices and rudimentary data dashboard interfaces, to ensure collection preservation and avoid damaging environmental conditions, such as high temperature or humidity. Data dashboard interfaces are a popular means of efficiently monitoring complex, high-volume, and real-time data. While open-source software, in which the code may be modified as needed by individuals and/or communities, is widely used in the archives domain for collection management, the commercial environmental monitoring systems tend to be closed source and inflexible in use. The authors’ prior user-centered research with archivist practitioners has indicated many issues with the current commercial environmental monitoring systems and noted the potential for more flexible, open, and modern technology solutions. This research study explores the design and evaluation, through usability testing and heuristic evaluation, of an open-source data dashboard interface for archivists, with an emphasis on understanding the ability of current open-source tools in this realm to support archivists’ interface needs. Though the data dashboard interface was generally efficient and easy to use for archivists, there were several problems identified that require further development and evaluation, some of which may be more technically challenging than reasonable to expect from archivists. Several suggestions for the future directions this work may take are presented, which includes integration into existing popular open-sources systems currently developed by archivists.

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Correspondence to Monica G. Maceli.

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Appendix: Usability test tasks

Appendix: Usability test tasks

#1 You are away traveling at a conference. There are several datalogger devices being used to monitor the environment in your archive and you want to check in on the conditions while you are traveling.

  1. 1.

    What is the most recent temperature and humidity for each datalogger?

  2. 2.

    What is the battery level for each datalogger?

#2 Your organization just installed a new HVAC system last week and you want to make sure the temperature and humidity levels stayed in your desired range. You want the relative humidity to be between 30% and 50% and the temperature to be between 50F and 70F.

  1. 1.

    Check the temperature and humidity levels for the past week and see if you met your goals.

#3 The room adjacent to your archives has been under construction from June 2 to June 27. Data logger “featherlora1” is in the office and closest to the construction site. You want to know whether it impacted the archives and you want to share this information with your manager.

  1. 1.

    Check the temperature and humidity levels of “featherlora1” from June 2 to June 27.

  2. 2.

    Did the construction impact the archival environment?

  3. 3.

    Share the temperature and humidity data on device “featherlora1” with your manager.

#4 You want to increase your environmental monitoring budget for your archive. You need to convince your board of directors that this is an important initiative.

  1. 1.

    Find the most problematic temperature and/or humidity data in your archive.

  2. 2.

    Share the problematic data you found with the board members.

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Maceli, M.G., Yu, K. Usability evaluation of an open-source environmental monitoring data dashboard for archivists. Arch Sci 20, 347–360 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-020-09340-1

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