Dear Tookitters,
I have received the following somewhat contradictory bits of
information in assorted e-mails in the last few days.
"Designing a complex piece of software such as this toolkit is no
different. User requirements need to be fully scoped out before a
single
line of code is written."
"the questionnaire required no greater intellectual rigour than I can
muster on a Friday afternoon and was not the technical quagmire I
feared"
"I will be incorporating your comments and requests for clarification
in the next version of the document. We're looking for all comments,
but here's an overview:
- Comments on potential implementation
- Comments on technical efficacy"
It seems as if Tyler's document will offer the opportunity for users to
comment more effectively on the tookit. However, my staff who are both
doing MSc's in IT in Archaeology and who have both filled in the survey
have commented that survey was too general to effectively scope the
tookit work, while the HEEP protocol sent out by Tyler Bell is as yet
too complicated to understand clearly how it's going to work. For
example, what will be the interface, and how will mapping of fields in
different databases be undertaken. The HEEP protocol needs more plain
English to make it more understandable to lay archaeologists and museum
people. If you want the thing to work, it's operations have got to be
understandable to the operators, and pitched at the right level of
detail.
And by the way, I still can't access the survey form because the
Jiscmail "Command Confirmation Request" expired before I realised what
the thing was - there needs to be more plain English in Jiscmail
messages too.
Cheers,
Neil
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