Help Us Improve the DDI Website!

[Jared Lyle]

Dear DDI Community,

We are improving the DDI website (https://ddialliance.org/) to help users find the right DDI products and information.

We'd appreciate your help with two efforts to improve the site.  If you're interested, here’s how you can get involved:

1) User Experience (UX) Interviews:

We've contracted with a UX designer to evaluate the website, and she's looking for participants, especially Data Managers and Developers, for 45-60 minute usability interviews.  If you’re willing to share your thoughts and feedback on how we can improve the site’s user experience, please reply to this email!

2) Website Policy Decisions:

We're seeking input on key website decisions, including improving navigation, updating the homepage, managing the publications database, and deciding how to retain historical materials on the website.  If you'd like to advise on these decisions, please reply to this email.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Sincerely,
Jared 

Jared Lyle
Executive Director, DDI Alliance
ICPSR, University of Michigan
lyle@umich.edu

Follow the DDI Alliance on Twitter

[Joachim Wackerow]

Hi Jared,

I would like to make some remarks on the publications and tools.

The publications page seems very important to show the breadth of material on DDI and the use of the specifications. The current situation with downloading a spreadsheet file is really not satisfactory in the age of  web-based information.

Searching the publications database according to multiple criteria in a web page would be really great.

What happened to the tools page? I couldn't find it.

Both, the publications and the tools, can also be understood as a way of marketing. Therefore, effort should be invested into providing information on publications and tools in a user-friendly way.

Managing publications in an external system like BibSonomy might be an approach which doesn't require an own database.

Cheers,
Achim

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[Wenzig, Knut]

Hi,

I’m encountering a few issues related to the product pages:

• In the “Products” pull-down menu, there are two options labeled “Product Suite” — only the first one appears to function.
• The page https://ddialliance.org/product_suite doesn’t seem to be finalized (it still says "Add subheading here"). Why not replace it with the overview page: https://ddialliance.org/overview-of-current-products?
• The product names (Codebook, Lifecycle, DDI-CDI, etc.) only appear at the second menu level — this isn’t very convincing. I would suggest using the following structure directly under “Products”: Overview, DDI-Codebook 2.5, DDI-Lifecycle 3.3, DDI-CDI, Controlled Vocabularies, SDTL, XSKOS, Developing Products, Superseded Products. The Glossary could be moved to the "Learn" or "Getting Started" section. Also, replace “File an issue” with the appropriate link on each page (as done on the Glossary page, but perhaps make it less prominent).
• There is inconsistency in naming: the menu uses “DDI Codebook” while the product pages use a dash (“DDI-Codebook”). The same applies to Lifecycle and other products — this should be made consistent across all locations.
• The product pages should link to the relevant Getting Started pages.
• The general product pages for DDI-Codebook and DDI-Lifecycle include overviews of the different versions.
• I suggest moving the license information to the bottom of the page or to the individual version pages, and adding a citation suggestion for each version.
• Consider splitting up the Markup Example page or moving the relevant table to the individual version pages. Users are probably looking for markup examples specific to a version rather than a general overview.
• The version sections seem to provide a “best of” selection from the individual version pages, but the logic behind it isn’t clear. For example, on https://ddialliance.org/ddi-codebook there are three links for version 2.5. On the version page https://ddialliance.org/ddi-codebook_v2.5 there are additional links for the “Download package,” “Updating Existing DDI Codebook Instances to version 2.5,” and “Updates to DDI Codebook 2.5,” as well as the Schema namespace URL (though it's not linked). Are these considered less important?
• The parallel presentation of different versions doesn’t feel effective. I believe the Alliance would want to emphasize the most current version. That version (e.g., DDI-Lifecycle 3.3 or DDI-Codebook 2.5) should be the most prominent, with older versions archived or made secondary. Ideally, when visiting the Codebook page, the focus should be on the latest version (2.5).
• Lastly, as far as I know, DDI-Codebook is not limited to single datasets — although documentation about this is admittedly unclear. The word “single” appears here: https://ddialliance.org/ddi-codebook and https://ddialliance.org/overview-of-current-products.

Best,

Knut

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From: icpsr-d...@googlegroups.com <icpsr-d...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Jared Lyle <ly...@umich.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 28, 2025 04:12
To: Data Documentation Initiative Users Group <ddi-...@icpsr.umich.edu>; DDI Structural Reform Working Group. <ddi...@icpsr.umich.edu>
Subject: [DDI-users] Help Us Improve the DDI Website!

 

[Jared Lyle]

Thanks for this feedback, Achim.  

Both the Publications and the Tools sections are placeholders after the initial website migration.  (The Tools section is currently here: https://ddialliance.org/tools.)  

We'll need to decide if and how we continue to support display and update of both sections.  BibSonomy is one option for the publications.  

Time is set aside at both annual meetings to review website updates and gather community feedback.  Separately, we have a UX designer making recommendations about navigation and page updates to make the site easier to find content.

Sincerely,
Jared

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/icpsr-ddi-users/f9a796f7-5ae4-4d6e-af27-031f0f2a9cf7%40posteo.de.

[Wendy Thomas]

Thanks for the feedback Knut,

I have created a Jira issue on this with the content of your email. 

https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/jira/software/c/projects/DAWS/issues/DAWS-43

I'll fix any specific points of error (such as on the Product Suite page). Some of the other changes were made intentionally and we will revisit them when we get responses from the UX review. 

Wendy

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/icpsr-ddi-users/BEVP281MB359999766371AA9AC8905BE2CC812%40BEVP281MB3599.DEUP281.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.

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Wendy L. Thomas                            

ISRDI [retired]

email: w...@umn.edu

[Wendy Thomas]

I have created a Jira issue for this comment using the message content.

https://ddi-alliance.atlassian.net/browse/DAWS-44

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/icpsr-ddi-users/f9a796f7-5ae4-4d6e-af27-031f0f2a9cf7%40posteo.de.