DEQAR User Interface Workshop in Rome

In the context of the DEQAR project, EQAR registered agencies as well as stakeholder partners of the project gathered in Rome in the beautiful building of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, for the DEQAR User Interface Workshop on 25-26 June.

The event, attended by 30 people from 14 different countries, was hosted by CIMEA, one of the project partners and had as purpose to:

• Understand how the functionality and presentation could be improved to best meet the needs of the target audiences;
• Determine what supporting documentation and guidance might be developed to aid end users;
• Consider how to inform current and potential audiences of the application that the Database might have in their own work;
• Look at possible additional data, change in collection scope or structure, historical data, data presentation, linkages to other resources through common identifiers, use of API, and machine readable outputs.

During one of the practical sessions “Systems Trials”, participants had to work through pre-prepared queries designed in advance to test different parts of the database. This yielded some interesting results, which will all be used to enhance and refine the structure, the scope and or the presentation of the database to further  improve the user experience.

At the same time registered agencies will be encouraged to upload more of their data so that in October 2018, the final refined user interface can be launched.

We would like to invite all website visitors to also try out the database and to subsequently fill in the user survey.