I recently received an e-mail from a web magazine I hadn't heard of before, Mormon Entrepreneur. Their latest edition spot lights members of the LDS Church that are entrepreneurs in the family history space. I enjoyed reading the articles and as a member of the LDS Church love the concept behind the magazine.
Here's a snippet from them introducing this issue:
Mormon Entrepreneur has published their latest issue on Family History entrepreneurs. Published online every other month, Mormon Entrepreneur seeks to engage aspiring entrepreneurs through the stories of successful entrepreneurs. The result is a community of entrepreneurs engaged in each others success. In this issue, Alan Eaton (OneGreatFamily.com), Janet Hovorka (Generation Maps), John Vilburn (Ohana Software), Paul Allen (FamilyLink.com), and Russ Wilding (Footnote.com) are highlighted. Learn about about OneGreatFamily's latest project OneClickTempleTrip.com. Ask yourself, “Would I do Family History work if it took only one click to find a family member that I could take to the temple?" Read their stories online at http://mormonentrepreneur.net. Enjoy.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Friday, May 08, 2009
Genealogy Questions Answered in 6 Minutes
How many times when you’re stuck on a genealogy problem have you thought to yourself, “I’m sure someone out there knows the answer to this question.” If you could just ask the right person a quick question it would save you a ton of time. Well over at FamilySearch we’ve been kicking around some ideas of how we might help people with this experience. This past Wednesday I was thinking about how much I’d like to find the death certificate for a particular ancestor when the thought struck me, “I’m sure someone out there knows the answer to this question.” The question for me was, how do I find the death certificate for Warren Dodge, who died about 1888 in Barton County, Kansas?
Well I decided to try a little experiment. What if I could throw that question out to a large audience. Would they respond? Would they answer my question? Here’s what happened.
6 May 11:47am I posed my question on Twitter. Twitter automatically put my tweet on Facebook as well.
Here are images of the Twitter and Facebook responses.
The first response was within 6 minutes! The last response was less than 6 hours later. All responses were accurate and helpful. As a result of the information provided I went to the Barton County genealogical society website and discovered that the county did not have death certificates that early and the state (as my online experts indicated) did not keep death certificates until 1911. I did not waste any more time looking for a death certificate but rather changed my focus to probate records. I called the Barton County records office and asked if they had a probate record for Warren Dodge who died there in the 1880s. Without even putting me on hold, she looked it up confirmed they had it and is sending me a copy of the whole file. Wow! That was a terrific experience.
Oh, by the way. The folks that offered answers on twitter are not people that I know personally. One of the responders on Facebook is an old friend I haven't seen for nearly 20 years. The other Facebook responder is a relative that I frequently collaborate with on genealogy stuff.
Well I decided to try a little experiment. What if I could throw that question out to a large audience. Would they respond? Would they answer my question? Here’s what happened.
6 May 11:47am I posed my question on Twitter. Twitter automatically put my tweet on Facebook as well.
- 11:53am - 1st response comes in via Twitter
- 12:04pm - 2nd response via Twitter
- 12:04pm - 3rd response via Twitter
- 12:14pm - 4th response via Facebook
- 12:31pm - 5th response via Facebook
- 12:51pm - 6th response via Facebook
- 4:14pm - 7th response via Twitter
Here are images of the Twitter and Facebook responses.
The first response was within 6 minutes! The last response was less than 6 hours later. All responses were accurate and helpful. As a result of the information provided I went to the Barton County genealogical society website and discovered that the county did not have death certificates that early and the state (as my online experts indicated) did not keep death certificates until 1911. I did not waste any more time looking for a death certificate but rather changed my focus to probate records. I called the Barton County records office and asked if they had a probate record for Warren Dodge who died there in the 1880s. Without even putting me on hold, she looked it up confirmed they had it and is sending me a copy of the whole file. Wow! That was a terrific experience.
Oh, by the way. The folks that offered answers on twitter are not people that I know personally. One of the responders on Facebook is an old friend I haven't seen for nearly 20 years. The other Facebook responder is a relative that I frequently collaborate with on genealogy stuff.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Timetoast takes a turn at timelines
I came across another time line tool today. My first thought was "really, another time line?" Then I thought, "surely they must know there are some good time lines out there..." This was followed quickly by "then they must think they have something unique...". Luckily, I keep a stash of artifacts and data about several ancestors so I can check this stuff out really fast. So I quickly made the time line below.
As with all time lines I've seen, it doesn't deal well with fuzzy dates that are common in genealogy (abt. 1850, etc.). I was also a let down to see that they didn't have a way to zoom or otherwise manipulate artifacts. Many genealogical artifacts are boring thumbnail-style and really require a lot of zoom to read. Aside from that, this was really fast and in about 10 minutes I had created a time line, shared it on my facebook profile, and embedded it in my blog. Nice work Timetoast.
As with all time lines I've seen, it doesn't deal well with fuzzy dates that are common in genealogy (abt. 1850, etc.). I was also a let down to see that they didn't have a way to zoom or otherwise manipulate artifacts. Many genealogical artifacts are boring thumbnail-style and really require a lot of zoom to read. Aside from that, this was really fast and in about 10 minutes I had created a time line, shared it on my facebook profile, and embedded it in my blog. Nice work Timetoast.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Conceptual Overview of Genealogical Research
In the past I've been critical of the design of the currently available genealogy software tools. In fact, I just went back and re-read a couple of my posts and realized that at times I come across quite critical. This is not my intention and I feel badly about that. I’ve made some very direct statements like, “…one of my basic beliefs as I've analyzed the genealogy space over the last 4 years or so is that sound design, including a solid understanding of the information architecture of genealogy is largely missing in the software tools that are in the market today.” I think I was going for passionate with that one but probably came across as arrogant.
What really got me thinking about this was a statement by Shoebox Genealogy asserting that PAF was still the best genealogy program out there in spite of its faults. That honestly set me back on my heels. I really respect the thoughts of Shoebox Genealogy so I couldn’t just write off that statement. I spent some time creating a concept map of PAF and much to my surprise, discovered that the concept map of PAF is really quite good. It has no concept of supporting collaboration in a meaningful way but as for its ability to support the individual work of someone trying to record the conclusions of their research it is pretty sound. The biggest flaws with PAF are that it has no concept of a hypothesis or theory, the integration of digital sources was an after-thought and suffers because of it, and it doesn’t help the user with the research process. I’m sure there are other holes, but these are just top of mind. I also noticed that some of the key concepts I thought were lacking in PAF were actually there, I had just never found them before because the user interface obscured or hid them.
So what are the key concepts that should be supported by a genealogy program? With the help of some co-workers, I put together a concept map about genealogical research. A concept map is a simple, but powerful, way to capture and communicate knowledge about a topic. The map identifies nouns (concepts) and shows how they are related through verbs. Here is a PDF of the concept map. The video below is a guided tour through the concept map. I’d really appreciate your insight and feedback on the concept map.
What really got me thinking about this was a statement by Shoebox Genealogy asserting that PAF was still the best genealogy program out there in spite of its faults. That honestly set me back on my heels. I really respect the thoughts of Shoebox Genealogy so I couldn’t just write off that statement. I spent some time creating a concept map of PAF and much to my surprise, discovered that the concept map of PAF is really quite good. It has no concept of supporting collaboration in a meaningful way but as for its ability to support the individual work of someone trying to record the conclusions of their research it is pretty sound. The biggest flaws with PAF are that it has no concept of a hypothesis or theory, the integration of digital sources was an after-thought and suffers because of it, and it doesn’t help the user with the research process. I’m sure there are other holes, but these are just top of mind. I also noticed that some of the key concepts I thought were lacking in PAF were actually there, I had just never found them before because the user interface obscured or hid them.
So what are the key concepts that should be supported by a genealogy program? With the help of some co-workers, I put together a concept map about genealogical research. A concept map is a simple, but powerful, way to capture and communicate knowledge about a topic. The map identifies nouns (concepts) and shows how they are related through verbs. Here is a PDF of the concept map. The video below is a guided tour through the concept map. I’d really appreciate your insight and feedback on the concept map.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Genealogy Today
I've been trying to find a way to quickly communicate the basic challenges of genealogy to others. I thought I'd try kind of a white board approach to it. This is The first portion of a longer video. The entire video presents a quick overview of what genealogy is, what some of the common challenges are for those getting started and proposes a future solution - 'The FamilySearch Way'. I've cut out the last part - 'The FamilySearch Way'. So sorry, I'm not tipping my hat yet about what's coming after new FamilySearch. I'd be curious in your feedback on the first two parts of the video. Does it hit home for you? Are there some major issues that should have been included in a high-level overview of this nature but were not?
Friday, February 20, 2009
The Popularity of Genealogy: Why Dick Eastman is Wrong
Yesterday Dick Eastman posted an interesting article about the popularity of genealogy. His summation:
As proof points he contrasts some indicators of interest in genealogy to indicators of interest in other popular activities like sports. He rightly (and convincingly) points out that if the interest in genealogy is so high (Time Magazine reported it as one of the four most popular activities on the Internet in 1999) then there should be other indicators like money spent, magazine subscriptions or attendance at conventions. He points out that the dollars spent on genealogy pale in comparison to the billions spent on sports. Where for example is the Sports Illustrated of genealogy? Why are there so few attendees at the National Genealogical Society conference but 40,000+ at a Star Trek convention?
Well to be truthful, Dick is right. The number of people sufficiently interested in genealogy (as offered in the current magazines, trade shows, etc.) is quite low compared to other major hobbies. So how do you account for the difference between Time Magazine and Dick Eastman? Did Time get it wrong and Dick get it right? There is a simple explanation and here it is:
Interest < Barriers to Adoption
There is no question, in my opinion, that the majority of people in America (and I suspect on this planet) do have a strong interest in knowing more about their ancestry. However the effort required in order to satisfy that interest is currently too high for most people. Try this test on a random friend. Tell them that you have found a picture of their 3rd Great Grandpa and you think there are some striking similarities. Ask them if they’d like to see it. What do you think the response rate would be? Pretty high.
Then tell that friend that to see it they have to pay you $350, create a research plan, keep a research log, spend countless hours scanning through microfilm, become an expert on the Palatine Migration, learn to read ancient German and walk across a bed of hot coals barefoot while carrying an elephant in one hand. The number of positive responses goes down slightly.
People are interested in their ancestors. They aren’t interested in becoming genealogist or in running a gauntlet to satisfy that interest. The creators of genealogy magazines, conferences and the industry as a whole have focused on delivering something that is of interest to those that are willing to run the gauntlet. For example, Elizabeth Shown Mills excellent reference, Evidence Explained, while impressive in detail and thud factor, is not going to be on the coffee table of the average American. I’m sure this wasn’t her intention. To the average person it makes the gauntlet that much more overwhelming. To those that are willing to run the gauntlet it is an essential reference.
I believe we are getting close to a tipping point on the equation. Imagine what would happen if the equation changed.
Interest > Barriers to Adoption
There has been a flurry of activity in the industry recently trying to make genealogy accessible to the masses. For example, both Geni.com and FamilyLink’s We’re Related Facebook application have millions of subscribers. I suspect that ‘serious’ genealogists don’t consider these very relevant – especially We’re Related. They are extremely relevant to me. They have successfully created something that allows the average person with an interest in genealogy to start playing. There is however still a gap between the ordinary person’s desire to know about their ancestors in a rich, accurate and easy way and what these applications offer.
What will it take to deliver an experience that is accessible to the average person but can still help them discover their ancestors in a genealogically sound manner without requiring them to become a genealogist? Here’s an extremely high level list. Just making progress on these four items would take us past the tipping point.
While these are hard tasks, they are not impossible tasks. They are hard on the order of a decade or two. The tipping point however is within five years. When that happens there are hundreds of millions of people with an interest in their ancestors that will be able to have a meaningful experience without having to walk on hot coals or carry elephants.
I will suggest that genealogy is indeed a very popular activity among Americans. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, people are actively looking for their family heritage. However, that number pales in comparison to some other personal interests that I have mentioned.
As proof points he contrasts some indicators of interest in genealogy to indicators of interest in other popular activities like sports. He rightly (and convincingly) points out that if the interest in genealogy is so high (Time Magazine reported it as one of the four most popular activities on the Internet in 1999) then there should be other indicators like money spent, magazine subscriptions or attendance at conventions. He points out that the dollars spent on genealogy pale in comparison to the billions spent on sports. Where for example is the Sports Illustrated of genealogy? Why are there so few attendees at the National Genealogical Society conference but 40,000+ at a Star Trek convention?
Well to be truthful, Dick is right. The number of people sufficiently interested in genealogy (as offered in the current magazines, trade shows, etc.) is quite low compared to other major hobbies. So how do you account for the difference between Time Magazine and Dick Eastman? Did Time get it wrong and Dick get it right? There is a simple explanation and here it is:
Interest < Barriers to Adoption
There is no question, in my opinion, that the majority of people in America (and I suspect on this planet) do have a strong interest in knowing more about their ancestry. However the effort required in order to satisfy that interest is currently too high for most people. Try this test on a random friend. Tell them that you have found a picture of their 3rd Great Grandpa and you think there are some striking similarities. Ask them if they’d like to see it. What do you think the response rate would be? Pretty high.
Then tell that friend that to see it they have to pay you $350, create a research plan, keep a research log, spend countless hours scanning through microfilm, become an expert on the Palatine Migration, learn to read ancient German and walk across a bed of hot coals barefoot while carrying an elephant in one hand. The number of positive responses goes down slightly.
People are interested in their ancestors. They aren’t interested in becoming genealogist or in running a gauntlet to satisfy that interest. The creators of genealogy magazines, conferences and the industry as a whole have focused on delivering something that is of interest to those that are willing to run the gauntlet. For example, Elizabeth Shown Mills excellent reference, Evidence Explained, while impressive in detail and thud factor, is not going to be on the coffee table of the average American. I’m sure this wasn’t her intention. To the average person it makes the gauntlet that much more overwhelming. To those that are willing to run the gauntlet it is an essential reference.
I believe we are getting close to a tipping point on the equation. Imagine what would happen if the equation changed.
Interest > Barriers to Adoption
There has been a flurry of activity in the industry recently trying to make genealogy accessible to the masses. For example, both Geni.com and FamilyLink’s We’re Related Facebook application have millions of subscribers. I suspect that ‘serious’ genealogists don’t consider these very relevant – especially We’re Related. They are extremely relevant to me. They have successfully created something that allows the average person with an interest in genealogy to start playing. There is however still a gap between the ordinary person’s desire to know about their ancestors in a rich, accurate and easy way and what these applications offer.
What will it take to deliver an experience that is accessible to the average person but can still help them discover their ancestors in a genealogically sound manner without requiring them to become a genealogist? Here’s an extremely high level list. Just making progress on these four items would take us past the tipping point.
- Make the most relevant historical records viewable and searchable online. FamilySearch and The Generations Network (and many others) are actively working on this.
- Remove inhibitors to collaboration. Geni.com and FamilyLink are making progress on this by integrating social networking concepts with genealogy. Their efforts aren’t a complete solution but a good start.
- The system knows how to do genealogy so the user doesn’t have to. I think there are three major areas of focus on this one: 1) The system needs to be able to help the user decide what to do 2) the system must be able to identify and execute a research strategy 3) the system must be able to help the user perform meaningful analysis of evidence without the user having to know how to analyze evidence (I believe this is the hardest one).
- Integrate item two and three above so that the system can take the complex work process of genealogy, divide it into discreet tasks and spread those tasks across large numbers of users (based on their interest, resources and skill) and coordinate the final outcome into ‘completed’ genealogical research.
While these are hard tasks, they are not impossible tasks. They are hard on the order of a decade or two. The tipping point however is within five years. When that happens there are hundreds of millions of people with an interest in their ancestors that will be able to have a meaningful experience without having to walk on hot coals or carry elephants.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Information Architect?
I just returned from the IDEA 2008 Conference which was held in Chicago, Illinois. One of the interesting things about this conference was that while many people were there to discuss the field of Information Architecture, no one seemed to feel confident in there ability to articulate what Information Architecture is. After spending several days interacting in workshops and listening to lectures, it is clear that there is high value in what these people were talking about but it was difficult to carve out Information Architecture as a separate and meaningful discipline from Design. If anything Information Architecture is the core of sound design. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you want to have good design, you must do the things that the Information Architects were discussing at this conference but if you did just the things the Information Architects were discussing you would not necessarily end up with a good design.
You may be wondering right about now why I've chosen to ramble on about this on my genealogy blog. Well one of my basic beliefs as I've analyzed the genealogy space over the last 4 years or so is that sound design, including a solid understanding of the information architecture of genealogy is largely missing in the software tools that are in the market today. I hope to delve into this more over the coming weeks.
You may be wondering right about now why I've chosen to ramble on about this on my genealogy blog. Well one of my basic beliefs as I've analyzed the genealogy space over the last 4 years or so is that sound design, including a solid understanding of the information architecture of genealogy is largely missing in the software tools that are in the market today. I hope to delve into this more over the coming weeks.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wanna know what's happening in your tree?
We've been playing around with different ways to keep tabs on what's happening in your tree on the FamilySearch pilot program at new.familysearch.org. A common request and often dreamed of feature is to be able to do simple things like see a list of everyone in my tree. This is somewhat of a challenging request in the pilot system as the definition of your tree is ambiguous. You connect into the common tree which is shared by many users. Knowing where your tree stops and starts is not a discreet question.
We have considered allowing users to define a scope of interest which we could monitor and report on. Imagine you'd like to know who in your tree has been updated recently, or who has multiple parents, or who has sources, etc., etc. You could define a scope of interest for example assume I'm working on my Brewster line. I go over to Sarah Augusta Brewster and tell the system I want to define a scope of interest starting at Sarah and going back 5 generations and down 2 generations at each generation. The system would then report to me about activity in this portion of the tree.
We took this concept a step further and hooked it up to a technology called RSS which basically allowed us to run a report against a scope of interest and pipe it out using RSS to any number of news readers. Here's a snapshot of the feed from my tree in Google Reader.
You can click on any of the items and it takes you to the person in the tree. I shared this list with my sister, who is an avid genealogist, and she immediately began using it as a punch list of things to do on our tree. I then got new things on my list indicating that people in the tree had been updated. You can imagine how useful this would be to keep tabs on people in the tree and see who is updating them. Before you get too excited about this, remember, this was just a quick demo we hacked together to show the concept. It is not ready for prime time.
We have considered allowing users to define a scope of interest which we could monitor and report on. Imagine you'd like to know who in your tree has been updated recently, or who has multiple parents, or who has sources, etc., etc. You could define a scope of interest for example assume I'm working on my Brewster line. I go over to Sarah Augusta Brewster and tell the system I want to define a scope of interest starting at Sarah and going back 5 generations and down 2 generations at each generation. The system would then report to me about activity in this portion of the tree.
We took this concept a step further and hooked it up to a technology called RSS which basically allowed us to run a report against a scope of interest and pipe it out using RSS to any number of news readers. Here's a snapshot of the feed from my tree in Google Reader.
You can click on any of the items and it takes you to the person in the tree. I shared this list with my sister, who is an avid genealogist, and she immediately began using it as a punch list of things to do on our tree. I then got new things on my list indicating that people in the tree had been updated. You can imagine how useful this would be to keep tabs on people in the tree and see who is updating them. Before you get too excited about this, remember, this was just a quick demo we hacked together to show the concept. It is not ready for prime time.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
SimpatiGo
I saw an interesting mashup today - SimpatiGo.com. It is kind of a walking tour wiki. You can put in the begin and end points of your journey and it will give you a customized walking tour which gives you directions and lists all of the interesting sites along the way. The novel part of their concept is doing this wiki-style which means anyone can add their own points of interest. I went in and added a few points of interest in downtown Salt Lake and quickly had a walking tour past Temple Square.
I'm assuming they will also let you edit points of interest in the future. The usability isn't quite where it needs to be for broad acceptance but the concept is interesting.
You may wonder why I put this on my genealogy blog. Well, I can think of all kinds of interesting applications in the world of genealogy. For example, who wouldn't want to take a walking tour of the places where their ancestors lived? You could also take a similar concept and create walking tours through your family. For example, many applications can calculate the relationship between two people in a pedigree, imagine if part of that calculation also walked you through the relationship and highlighted interesting tidbits and artifacts that supported or accented the path between the two people. That would be cool!
I'm assuming they will also let you edit points of interest in the future. The usability isn't quite where it needs to be for broad acceptance but the concept is interesting.
You may wonder why I put this on my genealogy blog. Well, I can think of all kinds of interesting applications in the world of genealogy. For example, who wouldn't want to take a walking tour of the places where their ancestors lived? You could also take a similar concept and create walking tours through your family. For example, many applications can calculate the relationship between two people in a pedigree, imagine if part of that calculation also walked you through the relationship and highlighted interesting tidbits and artifacts that supported or accented the path between the two people. That would be cool!
Friday, April 11, 2008
Find a Grave and the Super Sleuths
A friend of mine recently pointed me to the findagrave.com website. I registered and volunteered to find graves in cemeteries near my home. Once I find a grave, I take pictures of the headstone and upload it to the site. The site seems to facilitate this volunteer headstone service fairly well. Last weekend I 'claimed' my first three assignments. I decided to see if my 3 older children would be interested in this activity. After all, what could be more fun for an 11yr old boy, and 9 and 7yr old girls?
Ok, so I needed a strategy to get the kids interested in the project. My idea, ask them to help me solve a mystery. The girls are totally captivated with Nancy Drew and my oldest son doesn't leave his bedroom in the morning without a magnifying glass. As soon as the word mystery crested my lips they ran to get their detective notepads, magnifying glasses, and various other mystery-solving paraphernalia. I gave them the clues: name, birth date, death date, plot number. As we approached the cemetery they put their sleuthing brains together and determined that based on the death date the grave was probably in the upper, older, part of the cemetery. They noticed numbers painted on the roads that they figured out were way points for plot numbers and within five minutes had found the first headstone.
My super sleuths found 2 of the 3 grave stones last weekend. The third seems to be buried or missing. They're heading out on their bikes later today to find 3 more and get pictures. They are excited about helping other people do family history through their small acts of services.
Ok, so I needed a strategy to get the kids interested in the project. My idea, ask them to help me solve a mystery. The girls are totally captivated with Nancy Drew and my oldest son doesn't leave his bedroom in the morning without a magnifying glass. As soon as the word mystery crested my lips they ran to get their detective notepads, magnifying glasses, and various other mystery-solving paraphernalia. I gave them the clues: name, birth date, death date, plot number. As we approached the cemetery they put their sleuthing brains together and determined that based on the death date the grave was probably in the upper, older, part of the cemetery. They noticed numbers painted on the roads that they figured out were way points for plot numbers and within five minutes had found the first headstone.
My super sleuths found 2 of the 3 grave stones last weekend. The third seems to be buried or missing. They're heading out on their bikes later today to find 3 more and get pictures. They are excited about helping other people do family history through their small acts of services.
Monday, March 31, 2008
FamilySearch Training Wiki?
As the new FamilySearch system continues to be rolled out around the world, the demand for training materials is growing. I've seen several great presentations created by people in the community that were tasked with training a group of people on the new system. A colleague (Tim Cross) and I were talking about this and he mused that it would be wonderful if there were a FamilySearch Training Wiki or some site where the community could come together and pool there knowledge, tools, slideshows, etc. that they use for training. A site like this would be a tremendous resource. This is not an 'official' effort by FamilySearch, just an interesting idea two guys talked through around the water cooler (OK so it was really in IM...). Anyone feel like giving this a go?
Friday, February 22, 2008
Source Centric Prototype
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about concepts of source-centric genealogy. I've written in the past about how most family history applications tend to put the emphasis on the conclusions drawn and not the sources found. Of course they allow you to add a source citation and perhaps even include an image, but the heart of the experience (screen realestate, prominence, features, etc.) is about the conclusions. The paradox is that the heart of the matter really is the evidence.
We've built a prototype to try and make evidence more central to the experience. It has been interesting to see the reactions of different customer segments to the prototype. The professional genealogists love having the evidence right there. Those who have never done genealogy don't really care about the subtleties of evidence but are thrilled to see images of original documents about their ancestors.
One of the really interesting things in the reactions to the prototype was how people felt about different sources of information. You see, the prototype works against the new FamilySearch. The new FamilySearch contains basically all of the lineage-linked data sets in the possession of FamilySearch. This includes Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, International Genealogical Index, and many other lesser-known data sets. As we built the new FamilySearch we combined all of these data sets into one system. Where we had extremely high confidence that people were the same, we combined the records together into one person (OK, actually the computers did this for us). We did this in a non-destructive way. You could think of it like putting all of the people that were the same into one folder. You can pull out the individual people or you can look at the whole folder as one person.
Anyway, the reason for all of that background is the prototype basically starts with the new FamilySearch and displays the information as conclusions with sources rather than people combined together. When we showed this to people (especially those more experienced with genealogy) they really bristled at the trees but loved the sources. Here's some screen shots.
The nice thing about the way this is working out is that even though this kind of displays things separated out again, the new FamilySearch effort creates a mapping for us between people and the system and all of the other information in the system. That means when you start out, you already have a tree pieced together and you can see the sources and trees that were used to do it.
This is kind of a ramble but if it sparks any thoughts I'd love to hear them.
We've built a prototype to try and make evidence more central to the experience. It has been interesting to see the reactions of different customer segments to the prototype. The professional genealogists love having the evidence right there. Those who have never done genealogy don't really care about the subtleties of evidence but are thrilled to see images of original documents about their ancestors.
One of the really interesting things in the reactions to the prototype was how people felt about different sources of information. You see, the prototype works against the new FamilySearch. The new FamilySearch contains basically all of the lineage-linked data sets in the possession of FamilySearch. This includes Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, International Genealogical Index, and many other lesser-known data sets. As we built the new FamilySearch we combined all of these data sets into one system. Where we had extremely high confidence that people were the same, we combined the records together into one person (OK, actually the computers did this for us). We did this in a non-destructive way. You could think of it like putting all of the people that were the same into one folder. You can pull out the individual people or you can look at the whole folder as one person.
Anyway, the reason for all of that background is the prototype basically starts with the new FamilySearch and displays the information as conclusions with sources rather than people combined together. When we showed this to people (especially those more experienced with genealogy) they really bristled at the trees but loved the sources. Here's some screen shots.
The nice thing about the way this is working out is that even though this kind of displays things separated out again, the new FamilySearch effort creates a mapping for us between people and the system and all of the other information in the system. That means when you start out, you already have a tree pieced together and you can see the sources and trees that were used to do it.
This is kind of a ramble but if it sparks any thoughts I'd love to hear them.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Mashups with FamilySearch
This is just a short post, I'll write more later. I just wanted to show the world the first step toward a new world where you can build mashups with data from the new FamilySearch. Click one of the links in the iframe below to load data about a person in the new FamilySearch. This particular sample is not really pretty but let your imagination start working on all of the powerful things you (at least the developers out there) could do with this type of access to the new FamilySearch.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
More on Source-Centricity: Conclusions, Artifacts, and Evidence
Conclusions, Artifacts, and Evidence
We've been prototyping a flow for the Life Browser which allows users to create a person, add conclusions about that person, add artifacts about that person, and identify the artifacts that are supporting evidence for these conclusion. In this approach there are three basic types of data 1) Conclusions 2) Artifacts 3) Evidence.
Conclusions: These are basically what people believe to be the vital information about a person (birth, marriage, death, relationships, etc.).
Artifacts: A digital representation of something relating to a person's life. It consists of metadata which describes the artifact and provides source citation information; and may contain images, video, audio, or text. Artifacts are also of a particular type: picture, record, story, video, audio, personal knowledge.
Evidence: Evidence is the linkage of an artifact to one or more conclusions. It contains the linkage between the conclusion(s) and the artifact and a note explaining the linkage (optional).
One of the current shortcomings is we haven't determined how to represent a conclusion which is a hypothesis and may or may not have evidence to support the hypothesis.
Evidence of Relationships
On a related note, for some time we've wanted to be more explicit in identifying evidence that supports relationships. I haven't seen any tools that do this. Have I missed something? For example, it is one thing to have evidence that 1 Jan 1900 is the birth date and quite another to have evidence that Jack and Jill are the parents of Bob. Most tools however only allow you to cite the source of the birth event but not the source of the relationship information (which may be the same or a separate source). We're starting to play with a prototype that lets you explicitly identify evidence of relationships.
Anyone have any thoughts or ideas to share that might help us out with our prototyping? Please share.
We've been prototyping a flow for the Life Browser which allows users to create a person, add conclusions about that person, add artifacts about that person, and identify the artifacts that are supporting evidence for these conclusion. In this approach there are three basic types of data 1) Conclusions 2) Artifacts 3) Evidence.
Conclusions: These are basically what people believe to be the vital information about a person (birth, marriage, death, relationships, etc.).
Artifacts: A digital representation of something relating to a person's life. It consists of metadata which describes the artifact and provides source citation information; and may contain images, video, audio, or text. Artifacts are also of a particular type: picture, record, story, video, audio, personal knowledge.
Evidence: Evidence is the linkage of an artifact to one or more conclusions. It contains the linkage between the conclusion(s) and the artifact and a note explaining the linkage (optional).
One of the current shortcomings is we haven't determined how to represent a conclusion which is a hypothesis and may or may not have evidence to support the hypothesis.
Evidence of Relationships
On a related note, for some time we've wanted to be more explicit in identifying evidence that supports relationships. I haven't seen any tools that do this. Have I missed something? For example, it is one thing to have evidence that 1 Jan 1900 is the birth date and quite another to have evidence that Jack and Jill are the parents of Bob. Most tools however only allow you to cite the source of the birth event but not the source of the relationship information (which may be the same or a separate source). We're starting to play with a prototype that lets you explicitly identify evidence of relationships.
Anyone have any thoughts or ideas to share that might help us out with our prototyping? Please share.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Source-Centricity
Ex Nihilo?
Years ago I worked on a project using ethnographic research methodologies to study the life cycle of the creative process of knowledge workers. One of the primary take aways from this research was that there is no ex nihilo creation (ex nihilo is Latin for out of nothing). I'm not sure why we got hung up on the Latin phraseology. The point is that every 'new' creation or discovery is always built from something, it never comes out of nothing.
Genealogy is the same way. There is always some piece of evidence or source material which leads us to draw a conclusion about an ancestor. Some of you may wish to argue the no ex nihilo creation principle based on the grounds that you've seen many conclusions that appear to have come out of nothing but technically even those have come from somewhere. For many reasons, keeping track of this evidence is a core requirement to successful genealogical reasearch.
Warning, I'm about to make a critical comment. Please don't take offense.
It would seem that the genealogy industry or rather, those that provide tools to the genealogical community have fallen short on this requirement. I have yet to see a system that accurately maps the relationship between genealogical evidence and conclusions based upon that evidence and does it in a way that assures integrity (you should not be able to add, edit, or heaven forbid share conclusions without accurately associating the evidence). Nor have I seen a system for tracking evidence that is sufficiently intuitive and usable that it does not require staunch discipline to use. There is of course a reason for this. It is complex and hard. I don't believe it is impossible. In fact, it seems like a medium-hard problem.
While I can't offer statistics on this, I can say that the overwhelming majority of lineage-linked pedigrees submitted to the Church do not have source citations. I doubt this is a surprise to you. Why is this the case? Sure people pass around GEDCOMs, download pedigrees, etc. but this is just a proliferation of the problem, not the root of the problem. I believe the root of the problem is that the tools used to organize our family history do not offer a usable tool set for tracking evidence. The user interfaces and data models do not accurately represent the reality of the relationship between the evidence and the conclusions. They have totally missed the boat on what the user needs to accomplish in this manner. They have built square pegs for round-holed problems and users have been forcing the pegs through the hole ever since. The process is so hard as to prevent anyone but the most diligent from doing it. I am acquainted with many skilled genealogists that have given up on this process and simply file their evidence and notes into their filing cabinet.
I want to throw down the gauntlet. The manufacturers of these tools need to step up to the plate and solve this problem. We hope to take our first stab at this as part of our continued efforts on the Life Browser prototype on the FamilySearch Labs site. I'm sure we'll experience many failures before we get it right.
I'd love to hear your feedback on this issue. Have I missed some great tool out there? Does someone have a solution already? Have I finally gone completely off the deep end? I know these aren't mutually exlusive questions but please, share your thoughts.
Years ago I worked on a project using ethnographic research methodologies to study the life cycle of the creative process of knowledge workers. One of the primary take aways from this research was that there is no ex nihilo creation (ex nihilo is Latin for out of nothing). I'm not sure why we got hung up on the Latin phraseology. The point is that every 'new' creation or discovery is always built from something, it never comes out of nothing.
Genealogy is the same way. There is always some piece of evidence or source material which leads us to draw a conclusion about an ancestor. Some of you may wish to argue the no ex nihilo creation principle based on the grounds that you've seen many conclusions that appear to have come out of nothing but technically even those have come from somewhere. For many reasons, keeping track of this evidence is a core requirement to successful genealogical reasearch.
Warning, I'm about to make a critical comment. Please don't take offense.
It would seem that the genealogy industry or rather, those that provide tools to the genealogical community have fallen short on this requirement. I have yet to see a system that accurately maps the relationship between genealogical evidence and conclusions based upon that evidence and does it in a way that assures integrity (you should not be able to add, edit, or heaven forbid share conclusions without accurately associating the evidence). Nor have I seen a system for tracking evidence that is sufficiently intuitive and usable that it does not require staunch discipline to use. There is of course a reason for this. It is complex and hard. I don't believe it is impossible. In fact, it seems like a medium-hard problem.
While I can't offer statistics on this, I can say that the overwhelming majority of lineage-linked pedigrees submitted to the Church do not have source citations. I doubt this is a surprise to you. Why is this the case? Sure people pass around GEDCOMs, download pedigrees, etc. but this is just a proliferation of the problem, not the root of the problem. I believe the root of the problem is that the tools used to organize our family history do not offer a usable tool set for tracking evidence. The user interfaces and data models do not accurately represent the reality of the relationship between the evidence and the conclusions. They have totally missed the boat on what the user needs to accomplish in this manner. They have built square pegs for round-holed problems and users have been forcing the pegs through the hole ever since. The process is so hard as to prevent anyone but the most diligent from doing it. I am acquainted with many skilled genealogists that have given up on this process and simply file their evidence and notes into their filing cabinet.
I want to throw down the gauntlet. The manufacturers of these tools need to step up to the plate and solve this problem. We hope to take our first stab at this as part of our continued efforts on the Life Browser prototype on the FamilySearch Labs site. I'm sure we'll experience many failures before we get it right.
I'd love to hear your feedback on this issue. Have I missed some great tool out there? Does someone have a solution already? Have I finally gone completely off the deep end? I know these aren't mutually exlusive questions but please, share your thoughts.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Family History Technology Workshop '07
Yesterday I attended the 2007 Family History Technology Workshop hosted at BYU. Joe Martel from our team gave a presentation about FamilySearch Labs and the Pedigree Viewer. Joe did a great job and the presentation was well received.
We also had a table where we gave demos of the Pedigree Viewer and the Life Browser (not yet linked to the labs site but coming very soon). I thought the responses to the demos and the FamilySearch Labs concept were interesting. People were very fond of the applications but were amazed (and pleased) at the level of openness on the labs site. One gentleman that stopped to talk commented how for years the Church would go dark and then just release something. He felt the labs concept a strong and refreshing break from this approach.
Several developers asked about the possibility of getting their hands on the code for the Pedigree Viewer. We're definitely open to that. We just need to work out the logistics.
There were a couple of really strong highlights for me this year. If you missed the workshop, you'll want to check these out when the presentations become available.
We also had a table where we gave demos of the Pedigree Viewer and the Life Browser (not yet linked to the labs site but coming very soon). I thought the responses to the demos and the FamilySearch Labs concept were interesting. People were very fond of the applications but were amazed (and pleased) at the level of openness on the labs site. One gentleman that stopped to talk commented how for years the Church would go dark and then just release something. He felt the labs concept a strong and refreshing break from this approach.
Several developers asked about the possibility of getting their hands on the code for the Pedigree Viewer. We're definitely open to that. We just need to work out the logistics.
There were a couple of really strong highlights for me this year. If you missed the workshop, you'll want to check these out when the presentations become available.
- Gordon Clarke's presentation at lunch about the FamilySearch Affiliates program, APIs, and building a community of developers. If you're a developer the content of this presentation will be refreshing news.
- The Millenium CD. A group of researchers at BYU have invented a CD that will store for a thousand years without the data turning to mush. They believe that within a few years these disks will be the same cost as regular CDs/DVDs. We may finally have a digital counterpart to paper for preservation.
- John Finlay, Neumont U., and phpGEDView (PGV). This was a great presentation about their efforts to add a collaborative research assistant to PGV. Very good work. I really, really like their approach. Their UI leaves much to be desired but their approach is very solid.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Automatic Source Citations & Zotero
A colleague just pointed me to zotero.org as an interesting approach to handling source citations. While they don't seem to have turned their attention toward genealogy, their approach looks promising for taking us closer to automatic source citations.
Zotero is an open source project sponsored by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. You install a plug-in to your browser and then when you're looking at something you want to cite you just click the icon in your address bar. It handles multiple citations on the same page, allows you to edit citations, add notes, attach files, take a snapshot of the content or just point to it. Check out their demo.
For this all to work the site needs to have the citation information available in a form that zotero understands. Rather than force you to use their specification their architecture allows you to create your own translator that maps your citation format to zotero and then it just works. I'd love to see some of the major online genealogical repositories invest the small amount of work required to support zotero. At the same time vendors of record managers and other family history applications could integrate with zotero and the automatic source citation problem is solved.
Zotero is an open source project sponsored by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. You install a plug-in to your browser and then when you're looking at something you want to cite you just click the icon in your address bar. It handles multiple citations on the same page, allows you to edit citations, add notes, attach files, take a snapshot of the content or just point to it. Check out their demo.
For this all to work the site needs to have the citation information available in a form that zotero understands. Rather than force you to use their specification their architecture allows you to create your own translator that maps your citation format to zotero and then it just works. I'd love to see some of the major online genealogical repositories invest the small amount of work required to support zotero. At the same time vendors of record managers and other family history applications could integrate with zotero and the automatic source citation problem is solved.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Geni and Tech Talks
If you're reading this blog, you're probably in the loop enough to have already seen the Geni.com beta site. If you haven't seen it yet, it is definitely worth a look. It is basically a web 2.0 app for building a centralized pedigree for everyone. In that sense, it is similar in nature to what other players like the LDS Church, Ancestry.com, and OneGreatFamily.com have been working on. It does seem to be fundamentally different however in that they have done a great job of incorporating social networking and viral marketing concepts into the site. The site is also focused on living people to start with. They've done a good job with the usability. It is definitely designed for ordinary people. I found it interesting that they chose to write their site in Flash. We made the same choice for the work we've been doing on FamilySearchLabs.org. Our decision was driven by our belief that the end user experience would need to be very rich including lots of multimedia, animation, etc. I would guess that the guys at Geni.com chose Flash for this same reason.
On another note, the LDS Church CIO, Joel Dehlin, recently sponsored the first LDS Tech Talks. The basic idea is to provide a forum where those that are technically minded can interact with the Church on technology issues. They are trying to leverage the large community of people out there that are anxious to contribute their talents to improve the Church's technology. Read more about it at the LDS Tech website or on Joel Dehlin's blog. I wasn't able to go to the tech talks but my inbox has been flooded with all of the buzz and positive feedback it caused.
On another note, the LDS Church CIO, Joel Dehlin, recently sponsored the first LDS Tech Talks. The basic idea is to provide a forum where those that are technically minded can interact with the Church on technology issues. They are trying to leverage the large community of people out there that are anxious to contribute their talents to improve the Church's technology. Read more about it at the LDS Tech website or on Joel Dehlin's blog. I wasn't able to go to the tech talks but my inbox has been flooded with all of the buzz and positive feedback it caused.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
SnapGenie Meets Genealogy
I've been playing with the beta of the new MyFamily.com site. One of the interesting tools there is a feature that let's you narrate your way through a stack of images. It does a pretty good job of making it easy to recreate the experience of thumbing through a stack of pictures with your friends and family. I wondered how it would work to thumb through a stack of artifacts about an ancestor. Here's a really quick example.
I think if the application had a way for me to zoom in on my ancestors name or something else of interest in the records (like Microsoft PhotoStory) it might not be a bad way to share the information.
Check out the MyFamily.com beta. It is free and has some interesting elements.
I think if the application had a way for me to zoom in on my ancestors name or something else of interest in the records (like Microsoft PhotoStory) it might not be a bad way to share the information.
Check out the MyFamily.com beta. It is free and has some interesting elements.
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