services about us clients SSgA LiquidNet Raging Bull Fidelity Investments Gold Wire Tech. Reuters, Ltd. American Century Sony Trellix Corporation The Getty Trust news & publications contact us

Client: The J Paul Getty Trust , Los Angeles, CA. Collaborating Developer: Systems Planning, Inc., Las Vegas, NV Project: Electronic version of the Categories for the Description of Works of Art The Challenge: Design a User Experience for a massive, complex image and text database for a wide range of target users The HumanLogic Solution HumanLogic was asked by the J Paul Getty Trust to provide a flexible, intuitive and navigable user interface to the Census of Antique Art & Architecture Known to the Renaissance. The Census consists of records for about 15,000 antique monuments and works of art and records for 25,000 Renaissance writings about and drawings of these works; there are also 150,000 other records, such as preservation histories and authority records; and 25,000 images.The information landscape that the Census represents is one that has many dimensions and relationships. Our job was to make this complex data usefu and easily navigable. HumanLogic created a user experience that enabled efficient browsing and searching of a huge landscape of content, while utilizing limited bandwidth. For example, we used thumbnail images to represent search results that could be searched visually. We enabled single-click access to supporting vocabularies, so it would be easy for the user to create queries that employed the codified versions of research terms, such as geographical locations and proper names.   An example of "chunking": search results presented as image thumbnails.   Detailed record showing relationships The Janus system was designed originally to run as an MS Window client application, but part of the challenge for HumanLogic was to create an equivalent user experience in the context of a browser, a much different and less flexible environment. This added to the technical challenge, and as a result, Janus uses custom Javascript, and modules written in C++, HTML, SQL, and Visual Foxpro. The Results The Janus system was launched in 1998 as a permanent workstation in the Scholars' Room at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, CA.. A case study about the development of this project was presented at the Museums and the Web 1998 Conference in Toronto, and is available in a paper entitled "New Web-Based Interfaces to Old Databases".