Monographs are increasingly making the print-to-digital shift that journals started twenty years ago, yet many of the popular platform options for accessing scholarly books simply mirror the existing discovery structure for journals: books are presented as a sequential list of “journal article”-sized chapter files for downloading, a practice that “journal”-izes the book and arguably fails to take full advantage of the rich long-form argument that unfolds across chapters. JSTOR Labs, an experimental platform development group, convened at Columbia University a group of scholars, librarians, and publishers in October 2016. Together, they tackled this design question: if we applied data visualization and design thinking techniques to the existing corpus of digitized monograph files, how could we improve the discovery and user experience for scholars, students, and general readers? Over the course of two months, we conducted an ideation workshop with the scholars, librarians, and publishers; tested sketches of various ideas with more scholars to decide which concept to pursue; iteratively refined and tested alternate design ideas with increasing fidelity over time; wrote a whitepaper about our findings; and completed a working prototype during a “flash build” that aims to help users currently assess the relevance of books to their research and quickly navigate to the relevant parts. This cross-/multi-/inter-/trans- disciplinary digital scholarship project presented many design challenges and opportunities. The bulk of the presentation will focus on the design principles and the lean, user-oriented product design processes used to carry one of the product ideas through from concept to working prototype. We will show how design activities and principles proved indispensable in the quick and lean creation of a useful, quality product. There will also be a demonstration of the Topicgraph prototype that was created in November.

1. USER-CENTERED DESIGN AND
DATA VISUALIZATION
TECHNIQUES TO REIMAGINE
DIGITAL SCHOLARLY
MONOGRAPHS
jessica.keup@ithaka.org
Jessica Keup, JSTOR Labs
Converge 2017: Disciplinarities and Digital Scholarship
June 2, 2017

2. ITHAKA is a not-for-profit organization that helps the academic
community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record
and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.
JSTOR is a not-for-
profit digital library of
academic journals,
books, and primary
sources.
Ithaka S+R is a not-for-
profit research and
consulting service that
helps academic,
cultural, and publishing
communities thrive in
the digital environment.
Portico is a not-for-profit
preservation service for digital
publications, including
electronic journals, books,
and historical collections.
Artstor provides 2+ million high-
quality images and digital asset
management software to
enhance scholarship and
teaching.

3. JSTOR Labs works with partner publishers, libraries and
labs to create tools for researchers, teachers and students
that are immediately useful – and a little bit magical.

4. labs.jstor.org/monograph
REIMAGINING THE MONOGRAPH

5. HOW WE DID IT

6. WORKING
RAPIDLY
Can we improve the experience
and value of long-form
scholarship?
Aug-Sep: User Research
Oct: Workshop
Nov: Build Prototype
Dec: Release Paper/Prototype

7. USER RESEARCH

8. USER RESEARCH USE CASE FINDINGS
extracting
specific
information
citation mining reusing or
revisiting a text
immersive
reading

9. WORKSHOP

10. WORKSHOP TAKEAWAYS
1. Great writing
2. ‘Scholarly Kindle’
3. Content assessment
4. Quick navigation to point of interest
5. Larger scholarly conversation.
6. ‘Flip’ between digital sections
7. Simultaneous print/digital work
8. ‘Netflix experience’ between devices
9. Digital annotations
10.Collaborative annotations
11.Serendipitous discovery
12.Open and flexible files

11. PROTOTYPING

12. WHAT WE MADE

13. labs.jstor.org/topicgraph
TOPICGRAPH
Understand at a glance the topics covered in a book.
Jump straight to pages about topics you’re researching.

16. Topicgraph of:
Digital Humanities
Anne Burdick
MIT Press, 2012.

17. POSSIBLE NEXT STEPS

18. THE
“BOOK
AS
GATEWAY”

19. THE
“BOOK
DASHBOARD”

20. THE “SCHOLARLY READER”

21. THE
“CITATION
MIXER”

22. WHITE PAPER
Describing the project, process,
prototype and the principles to
consider when reimagining the
monograph
labs.jstor.org/monograph

23. Thank you
Jessica Keup
User Experience Prototyper, JSTOR Labs
ITHAKA
http://labs.jstor.org
@jaithica
jessica.keup@ithaka.org