Design & Development
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PETTT: zBento [2001-3]
I have worked continuously for the University of Washington Program for Educational Transformation Through Technology (PETTT) in some form since October 1999. During my time at the Information School, I've worked as a 1/4-time graduate assistant for PETTT. Over the last nearly 4 years, my role in PETTT has changed from web site manager to educational technology researcher to web applications developer to system designer. The theme of all these roles has been consistent, however: knowledge management (KM). KM is a buzzword that usually means using a set of techniques and tools to capture, store, maintain, share, and utilize knowledge (information and the stuff in people's heads) within an organization that values learning. PETTT has assisted several entities on the University of Washington campus that develop tools and strategies for educating learners, in classrooms, in distance programs, and in the world at large. The tools, which eventually took the form of a gradually evolving content management system, were designed and developed primarily by myself. When I started graduate school, however, I passed most of the development responsibility to Eric Maddox, a full-time developer for PETTT. During Spring quarter 2002, in which I took Classification Theory (LIS 535) and wrote a paper on Epistemology and Classification, I attended a meeting in the Architecture school to discuss how PETTT could help apply its content management tools in a study-abroad build-design class. We were discussing how all the information they were collecting would be organized, and I had a brainstorm: What if we built a content management system that used faceted classification? This led, eventually, to a strategy for creating prototypes, such as the Legal Gateway Project, and our development of a new content management tool called zBento. Process
Over the next month, I mulled over this idea and finally presented it to the PETTT team. I explained how a system that was able to more faithfully represent knowledge in its organization (information architecture) and, hence, its navigational scheme, might be a better knowledge management system as well. They were excited about the prospects, so Eric and I began designing the system. We started first with the data model. A faceted classification system is a poly-hierarchical, multidimensional subject listing, so our database had to represent those aspects. The content management system also had to provide for the classification of documents within that faceted system. During several day-long work sessions, we hashed out what the entities were, how they were related, and, eventually, what the logical schema of the database was. From those, we created UML class diagrams and built prototypes of the database and scripts that would generate navigational structures. Although Eric did the majority of the programming, we worked side by side on many occasions; I provided debugging and algorithm editing support. We also chose a name: zBento. The "z" is for Zope, the web applications development platform we used to build the content management system, and "bento" is the Japanese lunch box with compartments for organizing a meal. Development of zBento went slowly, since PETTT had a number of other projects that both Eric and I were involved in. However, we managed to incorporate our prototypes into many of those projects, including the Legal Gateway project. Lessons learned from those prototypes then informed the design of zBento. While we were doing all this, another PETTT team member, William Washington, designed and conducted usability tests on a user interface for zBento. Over the next 8 months, we'll write all the logic code to marry the data services of zBento to the user interface. Soon, what began as a thought experiment in a class will become a reality. Reflection
This work was very closely coupled with my intellectual argument that faceted classification can be used to generate information architecture. I wish that I had more time to devote to zBento and guide its progress to match my original conception of it. Unfortunately, technological and logistic limitations caused the project to change as time passed. However, the faceted classification system -- the core idea behind zBento -- remains integral to the project. More than anything, I feel I have gained an understanding of the life cycle of a long-term software development project. The seed of an idea became a team effort with very real consequences to the users of the systems we built. The skills I learned in Information Systems, Architectures and Retrieval (LIS 540), Database Design (LIS 542), Information Systems Design (LIS 543), XML Schema Design (LIS 598) constantly informed the technical decisions made in this project. Furthermore, the intellectual work and theory gained in Information Behavior (LIS 510), Organization of Information and Resources (LIS 530), and Classification Theory (LIS 535) gave me the inspiration and grounding for making zBento a reality. What's NextI worked with the zBento team until June 2004. Several of the prototypes that informed the development of this project, including the Legal Gateway and the Architecture project, went live, and we observed how these prototypes were being used. Based on the results of these studies, we adjusted our design accordingly. Additionally, I and the zBento team presented our work at the September 30, 2003, WebEd Meeting and in an administrative review of PETTT. Even though the administrative review went very well, the PETTT group was eventually dissolved due to political factors, and our work on zBento, save for the Legal Gateway and the Honors Program in Rome, never surpassed the prototype phase. Members of the zBento team went on to work for other UW units, and, hopefully, the knowledge gained from this project will be put to good use. Artifacts
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