DataCite Blog
  • Support
  • DataCite homepage

Refining our Thinking: How we are improving DataCite design processes

August 29, 2022September 6, 2022 Kristian Garza
https://doi.org/10.5438/f03x-vr69

Over the last two years, we have been reviewing our design processes, and in line with our strategic priority to “Provide easy, efficient, and responsive community services to support the needs of our community,” we have been improving the DataCite design processes. This post reflects on these improvements, and we plan to evaluate the impact of these design process improvements on new services/functionality.

Open science infrastructure discussions in working groups, task forces, project meetings, and collaborations can be complex. Generally, participants in these discussions have complex ideas from different perspectives, making it challenging to reach consensus on community needs.

The DataCite product design team is acutely aware of this challenge. We believe that creative problem-solving and transparent decision-making can help us to make progress as a community. That’s why since late 2020, we have been using design thinking and user experience (UX) techniques not only to collect and analyze user data but to efficiently build a shared understanding across different stakeholders.

We started by introducing Design Sprints to validate ideas received from the community and solve significant challenges posed by new services ideas. For those unfamiliar with the term, a Design Sprint is a time-constrained, five-phase process that uses design thinking intending to reduce the risk when bringing a new product, service, or feature to the market. As an example, in the planned Harvester service, we used the “How Might We” (HMW) method in the Design Sprint to create a positive framework for resolving challenges described by the participants. The HMW method is used by design teams worldwide “to prevent individuals from suggesting their pet solutions.” At DataCite, we use this method to capture opportunities during lightning talks and throughout the early phases of idea validation. This method allows our product team to take the insights and pain points we hear and positively reframe them.

When we were involved in the design sprint for the [Datacite’s] harvesting service, the “How Might We” question technique supported creativity while keeping the focus on the problem to solve for the user.

Britta Dreyer, Head of PID and Metadata Services, Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) 

Another place where we introduced these techniques was with projects such as the FAIR Island Project. A project in which DataCite’s overall role is to lead the technical development of a dashboard and further extension of the PID Graph.

During this project, we used Lightning Decision Workshops. A Lightning Decision Workshop replaces a typical meeting with a structured and time-boxed workshop, consisting of problem identification, prioritization, and reframing and brainstorming activities. This method helped DataCite structure open-ended, unstructured and complex discussions with a straightforward process, encouraging creativity and fostering innovation.

During the FAIR Island project….going through this [Lighting Decision Workshop] process allowed us to hear directly from our principal users and learn more about their current workflows and the gaps in the types of information and reporting necessary for their work. …..I think the best part of this process was the systematic approach to information gathering, which facilitated the uncovering of critical gaps in the information available to our users and provided an opportunity for the development team to gather requirements and fully understand the priority level of specific feature sets.

Maria Praetzellis,
Product Manager, University of California Office of the President, California Digital Library

Moreover, combining various techniques has helped us move complex topics forward through discovery and design phases in multi-organization projects. For example, within the DataCite Metadata Working Group, we used these techniques in one of the various schema changes. We used dot voting (an established tool used to prioritize items democratically), collective affinity mapping (for organizing research findings or sorting design ideas), and multi-staged brainstorming to achieve agreement and clarify the steps toward one of the new schema change recommendations.

While working on the definition of the … [a] metadata schema change, [these techniques] helped us to structure ideas and have a “roadmap” and defined steps. … Moreover, collaborative brainstorming and [dot voting] are techniques that I would like to see adopted in other meetings I participate in.

Jan Ashton, Metadata Standards Analyst, The British Library
From February 2022, we worked together with one of the Metadata Schema Subgroups using design thinking techniques to define the future support for direct access to content in the DataCite Metadata schema.
From February 2022, we worked together with one of the Metadata Schema Subgroups using design thinking techniques to define the future support for direct access to content in the DataCite Metadata schema.
In late 2020, the full DataCite team worked in a design sprint to define the planned Harvester service product design.
In late 2020, the full DataCite team worked in a design sprint to define the planned Harvester service product design.
Fig. 1 Working boards from the different workshops we run using the techniques described in this post.

These methods have helped the Product design team to be more lean and efficient in gathering feedback from our members and stakeholders while helping them move forward with complex discussions. As of today, around 50 stakeholders have participated in these efforts. At the end of the day, these techniques’ primary beneficiaries are the Datacite members and community stakeholders. If you are a DataCite member or a community stakeholder, we hope that you will see the positive effects of the application of methodologies in the variety of services we will launch in future product releases. 

Kristian Garza
Product Designer at DataCite | Blog posts
  • Kristian Garza
    https://blog.datacite.org/author/kgarzadatacite-org/
    New Release of Fabrica: Improvements Inspired by User Feedback
  • Kristian Garza
    https://blog.datacite.org/author/kgarzadatacite-org/
    DataCite Open Hours in 2021
  • Kristian Garza
    https://blog.datacite.org/author/kgarzadatacite-org/
    A Brave New PID: DMP-IDs
  • Kristian Garza
    https://blog.datacite.org/author/kgarzadatacite-org/
    Are You There, Metadata? It’s Me, the Bibliometrician

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
Uncategorized.

© 2022 Kristian Garza. Distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license.


Post navigation

Communication Comes From Community
Happy 10th Anniversary, re3data!

Recent Posts

  • New Release of Fabrica: Improvements Inspired by User Feedback
  • Welcome our new DataCite Committee Members
  • Wellcome Trust and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Partner with DataCite to Build the Open Global Data Citation Corpus
  • Full API support for DataCite Metadata Schema 4.4
  • DataCite Celebrate and Reflect on a Year of Global Community Collaboration

Tags

Anniversary (3) API (3) Bibliometrics (2) Citation (8) Conference (2) Content negotiation (2) Crossref (10) CSV (4) Data-level metrics (9) Data citation (7) Discovery (2) Docker (3) DOI (18) Dublin core (2) Fabrica (4) FAIR (5) FORCE11 (2) FREYA (8) Github (2) Google (2) GraphQL (7) IGSN (5) Impactstory (2) Infrastructure (13) MDC (7) Members (11) Metadata (34) Open hours (2) ORCID (17) Organization identifiers (4) PIDapalooza (5) PID graph (8) Policy (2) RDA (8) Re3data (11) React (2) ROR (5) Schema.org (3) Search (3) Services (5) Software (2) Software citation (5) Staff (6) Strategy (2) THOR (13)

Archives

  • January 2023 (4)
  • December 2022 (4)
  • November 2022 (3)
  • October 2022 (5)
  • September 2022 (6)
  • August 2022 (3)
  • July 2022 (1)
  • June 2022 (3)
  • May 2022 (1)
  • April 2022 (1)
  • March 2022 (2)
  • February 2022 (3)
  • January 2022 (1)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (3)
  • October 2021 (5)
  • August 2021 (2)
  • July 2021 (2)
  • June 2021 (1)
  • May 2021 (2)
  • April 2021 (2)
  • March 2021 (2)
  • February 2021 (3)
  • January 2021 (3)
  • December 2020 (1)
  • November 2020 (2)
  • October 2020 (4)
  • September 2020 (4)
  • August 2020 (3)
  • July 2020 (3)
  • June 2020 (2)
  • May 2020 (3)
  • April 2020 (2)
  • March 2020 (2)
  • February 2020 (4)
  • January 2020 (4)
  • December 2019 (3)
  • November 2019 (3)
  • October 2019 (5)
  • September 2019 (3)
  • August 2019 (3)
  • July 2019 (3)
  • June 2019 (2)
  • May 2019 (5)
  • April 2019 (6)
  • March 2019 (2)
  • February 2019 (5)
  • January 2019 (1)
  • December 2018 (4)
  • November 2018 (3)
  • October 2018 (4)
  • September 2018 (4)
  • August 2018 (4)
  • June 2018 (4)
  • May 2018 (4)
  • April 2018 (1)
  • February 2018 (3)
  • January 2018 (1)
  • November 2017 (2)
  • October 2017 (2)
  • August 2017 (4)
  • July 2017 (1)
  • June 2017 (1)
  • May 2017 (2)
  • April 2017 (5)
  • March 2017 (2)
  • January 2017 (1)
  • December 2016 (4)
  • November 2016 (2)
  • October 2016 (5)
  • September 2016 (3)
  • August 2016 (1)
  • July 2016 (3)
  • June 2016 (1)
  • May 2016 (6)
  • April 2016 (5)
  • March 2016 (5)
  • February 2016 (2)
  • January 2016 (2)
  • December 2015 (3)
  • November 2015 (3)
  • October 2015 (8)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (6)

About

  • What we do
  • Governance
  • Members
  • Steering groups
  • Team
  • Job opportunities

Services

  • Create DOIs with Fabrica
  • Discover metadata with Commons
  • Integrate with APIs
  • Partner services

Resources

  • Metadata schema
  • Support
  • Fee model

Community

  • Members
  • Partners
  • Steering groups
  • Service providers
  • Roadmap
  • FAIR Workflows

Contact us

  • Imprint
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Mail
  • RSS Feed
  • Twitter
  • Mastodon
  • GitHub
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn
We use cookies on our website. Some are technically necessary, others help us improve your user experience. You can decline non-essential cookies by selecting “Reject”. Please see our Privacy Policy for further information about our privacy practices and use of cookies.
RejectAccept
Manage consent

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT