Many projects in the digital humanities involve either digitization or enrichment of existing digital materials. In both these cases, the process can be understood as a workflow. This paper intent to discuss new forms of interactions for workflows tools. We used the workflow present in the Orlando Project to illustrate how structured surfaces can he useful to help scholars to track changes along big projects. This work was presented in a panel session at SDH-SEMI 2012 in Waterloo, Canada. See more here: http://luciano.fluxo.art.br/?p=316

1. Workflow Interface
for Editorial Process
Luciano Frizzera and the INKE Team
dosreisf@ualberta.ca
U of Alberta

2. Introduction
• Workflow management tool is
essentially a structured checklist.
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

3. Introduction
Systems for managing workflow in the context
of digital text production:
• Open Journal Systems
• Open Monograph Systems
Recent researches:
• Workflow analysis (e.g. Schroeder, 2009)
• Algorithms for automatic layout
(e.g. Albrecht et al., 2010)
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

4. Introduction
Structured Surface
“a cognitive interface artifact that provides a
layer of meaning that supports the data
imposed upon it”.
- Radzikowska et al.
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

5. Introduction
Structured Surface Workflow
Modularity and customizability associated with
workflow systems combine with a rich prospect
visualization.
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

6. Earlier Stage
Target:
Generic workflow from the world of journal
editorship
Technology:
Web Standards (HTML + CSS + JavaScript)
– D3.JS - Visualization tool
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

7. Earlier Stage
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

8. Earlier Stage
Too much information in the structured surface.
• Next iteration: Explore placing more
information in the tokens.
Limitation:
“SVG performs no automatic line breaking or
word wrapping”.
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

9. Current Stage: Orlando Workflow
Technology: Adobe Flash
Target: The Orlando Project editorial jobs
• 54 samples of XML-encoded original material
based on Orlando biocritical entries on
women writers.
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

10. Orlando Workflow
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

11. Orlando Workflow
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

12. Orlando Workflow
High density of tokens inside a stage, where the
overlap can make challenging to find or access
information.
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

13. Future Directions
• Features to enhanced the user experience
and the awareness of the system:
• Zooming User Interface
• Collapsing Stages
• Notification Center
• Perform usability tests.
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process

14. Works Cited
• Albrecht, Benjamin, Philip Effinger, Markus Held, and Michael Kaufmann. 2010. An
automatic layout algorithm for BPEL processes. In Proceedings of the 5th international
symposium on Software visualization (SOFTVIS '10). ACM, New York, NY.
• Canadian Writing Research Collaboratory. <http://www.cwrc.ca>
• Open Journal Systems Documentation.
• Open Monograph Project. <http://pkp.sfu.ca/omp>
• Orlando Project. <http://www.ualberta.ca/orlando> <http://orlando.cambridge.org>
• Radzikowska, Milena, Stan Ruecker, Susan Brown, Peter Organisciak, and the INKE
Research Group. “Structured Surfaces for JiTR.” Paper presented at the Digital
Humanities 2011 conference. Stanford, June 19-21, 2011.
• Ruecker, Stan, Milena Radzikowska, and Stéfan Sinclair. Visual Interface Design for
Digital Cultural Heritage: A Guide to Rich-Prospect Browsing. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate
Publishing, 2011.
• Schroeder, Will. 2009. “New tools for task workflow analysis.” In Proceedings of the
27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing
systems (CHI EA '09). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3877-3882.
• W3C. SVG-Text 1.1. http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/text.html
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process 14

15. Acknowledgments
Susan Brown
Mihaela Ilovan
Milena Radzikowska
Geoffrey Rockwell
Stan Ruecker
Daniel Sondheim
Jennifer Windsor
And the INKE team
Thank you!
dosreisf@ualberta.ca
Workflow Interface for Editorial Process 15