Deep Discoveries UX/UI Design

Timeframe: 2021
Funder: The National Archives

UX, UI and user studies for a visual search platform that identifies and matches images across digitised archive collections. This project involved working closely with the research and development teams at The National Archives, within parent project Deep Discoveries; with School of Design graduate Andy Cain leading on its design. Deep Discoveries explores how new machine learning methods can be employed to recognise links between visual items e.g. how a particular rose in a textile pattern appears as a herbarium specimen or as depicted on a ceramic vase. Archives and galleries are adopting ‘generous interface’ principles that promote browsing and linking towards greater exploration and discovery. Using computer vision, search is unconstrained by keywords, metadata tagging and indexing ontologies. The UI design included indicating in returned images areas picked up by the search, visually communicating in ‘explainable AI’ the automated functions of online searching.