Focus Setting:
Focus setting is a technique that allows large numbers of ideas to be sorted into groups for review and analysis via an affinity diagram. This technique was very useful for our initial design setting ideas, resulting in three main themes that emerged: sliding anonymity or degree of participation, passion and paths of discovery. Our group began by brainstorming about how to provide a richer experience with regard to an online collection over a physical one. We then derived our foci from this change of medium rather than just trying to pick from the obvious limitations (or breakdowns) of the physical world. The affinity diagramming process made it easier to see where the emphasis should be through clustering of topics, but also made it difficult to narrow down to only a few topics to explore.
Affinity diagramming makes it easier to see existing gaps in the information, allowing more questions to be generated before the foci are chosen. At the end of the focus setting, we came up with some extraordinary ideas to explore in our collection system (passion, sharing with specific groups, etc.); and unintentionally explored some more mundane tasks (adding, deleting, updating). Upon sharing our foci exploration with faculty, we then were able to address some of the direct comments made in the video that would truly benefit our collector and not attempt to re-create his physical world. Happily the focus setting did help us to establish the goals for our online system, but conversational brainstorming among us as a group and with faculty helped us to narrow to foci that will yield the best value of an online collection system.
