Widen Media Collective 6.1 Released
One of our featured DAM vendors, Widen, have released version 6.1 of their Widen Media Collective DAM system. The main new features seem to be as follows:
- Improved upload workflow
- Enhanced collections* presentation
- Updated metadata editing controls
- Dynamic media building
* I think this is a reference to what might be called “shortlists”, “favourites” or “lightboxes” on other systems.
“With the 6.1 upgrade comes polish and features that we know users will appreciate right away. For example, the new Upload Wizard speeds up the upload process for all users and helps administrators add metadata as part of the upload process. Collections are now easier to use, with a new slide show function for users that receive shared links. With the new technology we have put in place over the past year, we have all sorts of new ways we can enhance the user experience.” [Read More]
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The wording problem is interesting – what do you call it when a user manually selects a subset of documents/images in a DAM system, wants to store this subset and give it a name?
I tried to gather the terms different DAM vendors use for this functionality. Here’s the resulting list:
collection, album, folder, basket, dossier, project cart, tag, lightbox, list, shortlist, favorites, stage
In our product, we used to call it “collection”, switched to “tag” later and now consider switching back. Ideally, we would use a term that is immediately understood and widely used by comparable software. (Since our customers often store newspaper articles, not just images, photo specific terms like “lightbox” can be a bit confusing.)
Which of these terms would you recommend?
I always called these things lightboxes, however, that’s because that’s what everyone referred to them in days when stock photo libraries were the main users of DAM systems (when I first was involved in DAM).
It makes less sense these days and I’ve seen Media Asset Management systems full of video still with the term ‘lightbox’ splashed everywhere – which is probably confusing for many users, as you say. When working with creative teams, however, they tend to have less of a problem with ‘lightbox’ and understand it more readily – that may be due to their familiarity with stock libraries though..
A generic term like ‘project’ is possibly better, but even then there is room for confusion with dedicated PM systems and software like BaseCamp etc which is far more about actual project management than a list of media assets. Although DAM solutions might bolt on other features – this is the essential core function of these things.
‘Collections’ probably isn’t too bad, but it’s still a little nebulous and some users don’t grasp the meaning too well. If am explaining these to clients, especially managers, I often end up using terms like ‘shortlist’ or ‘favourites’ as they are familiar with those concepts from other applications or life in general, so one of those two probably makes most sense.
It’s a hard one to call, much depends on what terminology your existing users have become familiar with either through existing products or their own experience. I would probably not want to change it too often on an existing DAM system with a number of users, unless you’re making a wholesale amendment with a lot of new functionality.