On Saturday 20 June, DAAO was in Brisbane conducting a data-sprint and test of our new edit interface. Success on both fronts! We had the most wonderfully diligent crew comprising Rachael and the boxcopy gang (Zoe and Cameron), Paul Andrew from the Remix Project https://www.daao.org.au/projects/remixorgau-project/ , who brought along artist and writer Virginia Barrett  https://www.daao.org.au/bio/virginia-barratt/personal_details/ and together they worked on adding a bit more QLD performance art history into DAAO. Paul, one of our moderators, also helped trained other artists and academics who came along.

We hit our initial target of 20 emerging Queensland artist records associated with boxcopy in 3 hours! The records we worked on can be found here. https://www.daao.org.au/projects/boxcopy-data-push/ . It was a really fun day.  Thanks boxcopy.

The other reason for this data push was to test our new edit interface. This is the part of the website where members enter information into the database. DAAO is a complex database and so it’s vital that it be easy to use. If our user interface isn’t clear, members get frustrated, data gets entered incorrectly and thus the quality of our data and community suffers. Over this past year, we’ve been working hard with many research communities getting our hands dirty by actively using the database WITH our communities so we can get a clear picture of where we need to enhance or change the user experience of the site. We’ve been gathering feedback from meetings and training sessions with academic researchers, artists, designers and curators, and then redeveloping aspects of the site based on these sessions.

Last week we did a big deployment that addressed many of the issues that members were experiencing with the edit form and boxcopy was our first test of the new edit interface. It was a really gratifying experience: after about 15 minutes, I was more or less redundant, everyone registered and just started creating or enhancing records, creating links between artists and groups, creating new exhibition records, we even started linking images! It was more or less seamless. The new interface only slightly alters the old one but in a few significant ways 1. It makes creating new works, exhibition, recognitions etc a one step process (cutting out the awkward two step process we had before) 2. It has streamlined the EDIT buttons so they are easily to find. 3. it has made version history more obvious. Each of these changes has clearly had an impact if the boxcopy session is a good guide. We will continue to monitor these changes in upcoming sessions.

Thank you to all the researchers and research institutes, such as the Australian Institute of Art History, artists (in particular the Artist Run Initiatives, such as Fontanelle , Gray St Workshop  and boxcopy), art colleges like the National Art School,  curators, such as Gemma Weston from Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, and the Contemporary Art and Feminism Project who have involved themselves so enthusiastically in the DAAO the past year by hosting training and feedback sessions, talks and data pushes. Each of these feedback sessions has been invaluable to improving DAAO’s content and design which was a key component of our project this year.