The Library Repository Revamped
The TU Delft Repository is a database full of information. Students and researchers publish their research there and you can use it to find both knowledge and inspiration. But is the repository up-to-date? Is it easy to find what you are looking for? Can all the necessary information be added? It could be better, according to Ashley Hemerik, a master's student at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. And thus, she offers her proposal.
Ashley knew early on that she wanted to study Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft. "I used to be fascinated by cars. I wanted to design them." When she started as a student at the faculty, a world opened up for her. "I realised that you can do so much more within this field. Large and small designs, physical and digital products. Especially the latter began to fascinate me more and more."
Dungeons & Dragons
During her studies, Ashley often played Dungeons & Dragons with her friends. "It's a fun game, but it was tedious looking up the creatures all the time. That's why I wrote a programme that makes the inventory easier to search. I developed something similar for the Pathfinder game."
This further fueled Ashley's enthusiasm for digital design. "Designing a digital product is so much faster, it's easier to continuously improve. Especially the UX (user experience) side interested me more and more. So the opportunity to help upgrade the TU Delft Repository, was right up my alley."
TU Delft Library is currently working on a new back-end and front-end for the Repository. Ashley was brought in to develop the front-end.
Students, alumni, recruiters
"I first wanted to know who uses the Repository, so I could adjust the UX accordingly. It turned out that mostly students use it. They look for inspiration. What does a graduation project look like? What is expected of me? Even recruiters find their way to the database, looking for recent graduates."
"The people using the Repository are looking for information on complex subjects. Today you can just upload a pdf, in which you can add a link to an external page with more information. But you can't expect every student to build their own website." Therefore, Ashley developed a proposal for a page that gives a clear overview, looks more attractive and, above all, offers a lot of opportunities when it comes to uploading multimedia. For example, audio, videos, 3-D images, scripts, CAD models, animations, and more.
Interactive pages
Her proposal was well received. So the Repository could soon be looking very different. "The focus is now much more on interaction. Fellow students, researchers, alumni and recruiters can now easily learn about the student's research."
"So my plea to my fellow students is that if you have interesting material on your hard drive, such as a video of your experiment or an example of a piece of code you wrote, add it to your research. People will be much more likely to understand what you have done. You can also actively use it yourself when looking for a job."
Curious about Ashley Hemerik's work? Discover it here.
