D9.3 Usability evaluation report

This report presents information about how tools produced in the context of WP9 (Data Communities) have been received in their intended user communities. This emphasis on usability and usefulness is applied to, respectively to the following tools:

• The Ethnic Minorities and Migration (EMM) Survey Registry, that has been developed in Task 9.2 (Ethnic and Migration Studies)
• The pilot Knowledge Graph (KG) for Electoral Studies that has been developed in Task 9.3 (Data Community Project: Electoral Studies & EURHISFIRM)
• The pilot RESTORE platform for integrating data of different kinds in Heritage Science, that has been developed in Task 9.4 (Heritage Science and Humanities).

These three tools are in different stages of development and roll-out to their respective user communities. Furthest developed is the EMM Survey Registry. It exists in a well-developed beta version that has evolved with extensive input from potential users. It attracts hundreds of unique users per months which attests in and of itself to its usability, as well as to the clear need in the community of EMM researchers for a tool of this kind. While the tool will be improved further, it is evident that it can be considered as an unmitigated success already in its current version.
The other two tools --the pilot Knowledge Graph (KG) in Electoral Studies and the RESTORE data pilot for Heritage Science-- have each reached an alpha-version stage by November 2021, and both will be developed further in the months to come. The KG has been subjected to an internal functionality test by a small group of experts from the field, and subsequently has been evaluated more extensively by a more ‘typical’ group of end-users from its intended audience. This resulted in two clear outcomes: (1) there is strong enthusiasm about the potential of the KG and the current implementation, as reflected in a usability score just shy of ‘good’, and high perceived usefulness for researchers at different stages of their career; and (2) a number of weaknesses were flagged up that need to be addressed before the KG can claim to have reached beta-version status.
The RESTORE data pilot has been developed with strong input from experts from the various domains addressed by it and is main aspects have been validated successfully by these experts. The next stage will consist of a focus-group try-out with a more ‘typical’ group of end-users, to be conducted in the coming months. The continued intensive involvement of domain experts testifies to their positive perception of the usefulness of the RESTORE platform for their own work as well as for wider audiences of end-users.
At their current stages of development, it is already clear that each of these products represents a support for research in their respective domains that goes beyond what is currently available and that caters to actual needs of their respective data/user communities.