Don’t forget the users – Developing a portal for audiovisual media with a user-centred approach

The Competence Centre for Non-Textual Materials at the German National Library of Science and Technology together with the Hasso-Plattner-Institut (HPI), the University Centre of Excellence in Systems Engineering affiliated to the University of Potsdam and usability.de, has developed a portal for audiovisual media that optimises access to scientific videos from the areas of science and technology. The key feature of the portal is the combination of state-of-the-art methods of multimedia retrieval and semantic analysis. Thanks to automated video analysis featuring scene, speech, text and image recognition, the TIB|AV Portal offers content-based access at the segment level and the ability to link data to new knowledge. The development is based on analyses of requirements and usage conducted in 2010. A semi-functional prototype of the TIB|AV Portal was developed in 2011; the system was further developed and a beta version created in 2012/2013. The portal became fully operational at TIB in spring 2014. In order to ensure the accessibility and usability of the portal, the development was accompanied by a human-centred design approach. This paper describes the user-centred design process, gives an overview of the different actions taken and introduces challenges and advantages of the respective steps.