Improving access points for local history preservation by listening to users

User experience (UX) research represents how design decisions affect the target audience of a given product, whether that product is as tangible as a writing desk or as intangible as pathways to a digital object. This paper examines results from a case study of user interactions with descriptive metadata of one photograph, as shown through eye-tracking, verbal, observational, and verbal data. This paper discusses the role user experience research can play in representing and preserving local history and cultural identity, and it concludes with pragmatic advice about how UX can inform metadata design in future projects.