Application Merge

Summary

JSTOR Forum is a digital collection cataloging and publishing tool designed for institutions such as universities and museums. This tool enables institutions to share their digital collections across various platforms, including JSTOR, The Digital Public Library of American, and custom OMEKA sites. Here are a few examples of collections published on JSTOR, a digital library, using JSTOR Forum.

screenshot of a webpage that allows the user to input different tokens duration and easing for a button Open the cataloging tool in new window
A screenshot of the original admin interface Open the admin tool in new window

Problem to Solve

The JSTOR Forum was historically fragmented into separate applications for catalogers and administrators, creating significant operational challenges.

This siloed approach resulted in disjointed codebases, restrictive user roles, and a fragmented user experience that impeded performance improvements, publishing capabilities, and future innovation.

Goal

Recognizing these limitations, our goal is to redesign the Forum Cataloging and Publishing tool by unifying the codebase, enhancing user workflows, and creating a more flexible, coherent platform that can adapt to evolving user needs and support broader contributor engagement.

Roles

  • Information Architect
  • Content Strategist
  • UI Designer

Process

  • Inventory content and features of both applications
  • Create three architectual concepts
  • Review concepts with stakeholders and users
  • Develop final design based on input from the above steps

Concept 1

A sitemap the illustrates the structure for Concept 1 Open concept 1 structure in a new tab
A low fidelity mockup of the cataloging interface that includes administrative toolsOpen concept 1 in a new tab

Concept 1 explores the simplest way of bringing the current admin features into the cataloging tools while maintaining some principles of user experience and design. Implimenting this concept would be an easy transition for current users of the system and easy for the engineers to migrate.

Although the two applications are combined into one tool, the administrative tasks are separated from cataloging tasks in arbitrary and idiosyncratic ways as they were before.

Concept 2

A high level sitemap the illustrates Concept 2 Open concept 2 structure in a new tab
A low fidelity mockup that shows a dashboard with analytics includedOpen concept 2 in a new tab

The admin functionality is broken down into a set of individual features, prioritized and streamlined, then selectively placed into the various workflows of the combined application in a deliberate and intuitive way. This concept would be learnable by both current and new contributors. This is what we ultimately built and launched.

Concept 3

A high level sitemap that illustrates Concept 3 Open concept 3 structure in a new tab
A description of your imageOpen concept 3 in a new tab

For this concept, I flipped everything on it's head and shifted away from a catalog-centric experience into a publishing and content-management product.

There is not a separate publishing tool, with publishing features integrated into the platform, similar to a CMS. While this aligned with the future direction of the organization, this concept presented a profound impact on many teams and the JSTOR platform.

Starting small with entry points from the platform to the publishing tool could be considered in the near term. Ultimately, ideas from this concept where incorporated into a new product called Collection Loader.

Final Design

I screenshot of the final design that shows a list of their collection along side collection intel Open home dashboard in a new tab

I designed a new homepage that displays users' projects and essential collection statistics, based on feedback from user testing. In the past, users would be directed to the last project they were editing upon logging in, which didn't provide a true sense of a 'home' page.

A screenshot of the final design for the item list page that includes a global navigation and a dropdown exposing links tailored to an administrator Open in a new tab

I introduced an updated global navigation system, featuring global administrative tools and providing early previews of beta features. This menu is visible and accessible only to administrators. In addition, project settings have been restructured for convenience. They are now seamlessly integrated within each project, conveniently positioned at the top of the project item list. Access to these project settings is also restricted to administrators.

Emily from RISD, “I like the new joining of the Admin with the Cataloger environment. I would find myself having to login separately when I was trying to set up projects for students. It’s now just much, much easier.”