The WIDE World Web

WIDE Research Team Off to Israel & the West Bank for Samaritan Archive Project

May 20, 2009 - by Bill Hart-Davidson, from the blog The Samaritan Archive Blog

WIDE researcher Jim Ridolfo & WIDE interaction designer Mike McLeod are heading to Israel this week in conjunction with the Archive 2.0 Samaritan Scrolls project. While there, they will be doing community-driven design research with groups of cultural stakeholders in the project, members of the Israelite Samaritan community.

Mike & Jim will be accompanied by two other members of the research team: Sharon Dufour, North American Representative of the A.B. Samaritan Institute and a cultural liason for the project, and Janice Fernheimer, faculty member at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Fernheimer's research expertise lies in Rhetoric as well as Jewish & Israeli Cultural Studies.

The WIDE team will visit cultural centers in two Samaritan community locations: Holon, Israel and Mt. Gerazim, the Samaritan's Holy Site located in the West Bank. While there, they will conduct user-centered feedback sessions meant to inform the design of the MSU Digital Samaritan Texts Archive. The team's methods borrow from several traditions of design research including Scandinavian Participatory Design, Contextual Inquiry in the North American Tradition, and Cultural Design as framed by Native American scholar Craig Howe.

The overall goal of the team is to engage cultural stakeholders directly in design activity, establishing a design "language" that is equally accessible to cultural and scholarly stakeholders in the Digital Archive.

"Our research and design processes for this trip amount to a very simple, but important goal: listening," says Bill Hart-Davidson, WIDE Co-Director and Co-PI on the project along with Ridolfo.

Watch the WIDE blog for updates and pictures from the team!