Improve thumbnails

[TaniaSchlatter]

Thumbnails were created because Harvard Dataverse stakeholders wanted to identify their datasets with an image. Thumbnails work well when they are set by a user, and/or when a dataset has a lot of file types.

There are several issues with thumbnails:

• many datasets do not have a thumbnail, and the default icon is not informative.

• thumbnail images are too small to be useful on the top of the dataset page.

• thumbnails that the system selects by default are limited and often do not show useful information.

This issue is intended to capture research, examples, and use cases to help improve thumbnails.

Discovery: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Oir1n6KVauYxxZcNyuJsVmpvY4HCa0K0gzRGzxjTV-I/edit#slide=id.g6bdb0a7b77_0_50

Proposed Solutions

1. Improve technology:

• improve the resolution of thumbnails, so that they can be displayed at larger sizes (Dataset Thumbnail API - Size Parameter #5679, originally opened in part to help improve the display of thumbnails in social media)

• improve technology to recognize a wider range of image file types (issues?)

2. Improve UI:

• make thumbnails larger, without adding emphasis to default thumbnail icons (see Dataset Page Redesign  #6605)

• make the differences between default thumbnails more clear: Dataverse (a container), dataset (a collection), and file (an item of a certain type see replace dataset icon to more clearly differentiate it from a file #7991 )

UI sketches in progress

3. Encourage users to upload/select custom thumbnails:

• prompt users to add a dataset thumbnail before publishing

• highlight/flag the thumbnail image to users who have edit permission as a way to increase the visibility of the thumbnail feature, and prompt users to select or add a different (more useful) thumbnail image

• add a "crop" feature to help select more useful sections of thumbnail images

[TaniaSchlatter]

To dos:

• review UI sketches internally

• review related technical issues

• review UI sketches with the community – mockups were reviewed as part of the Dataset and file page review and testing.

[TaniaSchlatter]

This issue is related to #6684, and needs to be addressed along with #5679 to move #6684 forward.

[pdurbin]

improve technology to recognize a wider range of image file types

Related:

• Feature Request/Idea: Thumbnails should be created for more (and even custom) datatypes #8194