Student Projects
Several graduate students in the School of Information and Library Science
at UNC-CH have designed components of the OpenKey system as
part of their studies:
Plant Record Creation
Interface—David Knight
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for
INLS 257 User Interface Design, David created a Web interface
for the database that stores plant records. OpenKey staff
use this interface to add, delete, and modify records.
Data Independence
and XML Technologies—David Knight
This project, undertaken as an independent study, investigates
techniques for making XML encoded data independent of XML
applications by focusing on the transformation of relational
data to an intermediate XML format.
XML provides a standard, robust format for marking up data
so that it may be shared among many different data systems.
Yet, often applications that promise to export or import XML
documents do not deliver smooth integration with other "XML-capable"
data systems. With these issues in mind, this project created
a design-time system that 1) accepts user input, 2) transports
data between XML and RDBMS (and vice versa), and 3) executes
transportation while preserving data structure.
OpenKey Tree Identification
Key Interface—Sarah Reuning
Another student in
INLS 257, Sarah created a prototype of the public interface
for the polyclave tree key. The interface needed to be easy
to navigate for users with limited botanical knowledge. At
the same time, the interface needed to proved copious amounts
of information, such as term definitions and illustrations,
which aid in identification.
Given these specifications, the design process began with
a review of relevant literature and guidelines, followed by
periodic user feedback. An overview+detail menu, including
an internal scroll bar for browsing tree characters, was determined
to be the best design structure. Several sample interface
screenshots were created. The following shows the proposed
Tree Key main search interface:
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Additional prototype documentation included a task analysis, user profile, state transition diagram, IRB request /usability study proposal and participant consent form.
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