Getting metadata from your users http://www.ideaspace.net/users/wkearney/archives/entries/000290.html Trying to get users to apply metadata? Try the "drive by metadata" approach... wkearney 2003-04-26T08:42:35-05:00 http://www.ideaspace.net/users/wkearney/archives/entries/000290.html en-us Semantic Web 1 Trying to get users to apply metadata? Try the "drive by metadata" approach... 2003-04-26T08:42:35-05:00 I've always found it's best not to confront your users with dialog-boxes-from-hell when asking them to apply metadata. Better to have the data collected from them over time, during slightly tangental situations.

]]> Trying to get users to apply metadata? Try the "drive by metadata" approach... I've struck on the idea of this being "Drive by metadata". The idea being you get them hit-and-run style instead of chaining them to the desk and beating them into submission. The latter is certainly tempting but usability studies don't favor it.

Sort of like how Quickbooks handles creating a transaction. If it doesn't know the rest of the details needed it only asks you enough to get to the next step. An invoice can be entered with just a name. The address info won't be requested until later. When you need to mail something it hits you up to apply the rest. This is the sort of thing that more software should try doing. This is also why the additive/fragmentary nature of RDF is a wicked cool thing.

I've used the HTML screensaver for this sort of thing. The pages come up when my machine's idle. I can click on the checkboxes and submit forms without interrupting the screensaver. Works reasonably well. This makes the application of metadata a pretty random event. If a user sees something they understand as needing to be marked up they can do it without disrupting their current work. The machine's idle, otherwise the screensaver wouldn't have come up, so it's obvious they're not 'doing something' on it.


Anyway, if you want better results, give better data.

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