{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"negative_space_design__library_information_science","archetype_slug":"negative_space_design","domain_slug":"library_information_science","title":"Protected separation of bibliographic result signals","opportunity_summary":"Test whether preserving recoverable visual separation around essential bibliographic signals improves patrons' relevance judgments compared with both the current dense result template and a hierarchy-only redesign. The candidate is falsifiable and safely testable, but local problem prevalence, stakeholder demand, effect size, and distinctiveness from existing practice remain unestablished.","adopter_authorizer":"A library discovery product owner may authorize a non-production prototype study with cataloging, public-service, privacy, and accessibility review; production adoption remains subject to library governance.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Faster and more accurate discovery could improve access to relevant holdings, including for patrons with accessibility needs, but the frequency and severity of crowding-related failures are explicitly unvalidated."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate names affected patrons, staff, and product owners but supplies no interviews, requests, behavioral evidence, or adoption commitments showing that they prioritize this problem."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"Protected absence and immediate recovery offer a testable contrast with both the dense baseline and hierarchy-only rival, but no evidence yet shows a meaningful accuracy, time, comprehension, or accessibility advantage."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The composition has a coherent mechanism centered on reduced attention competition rather than aesthetic minimalism, but prior art is explicitly unsearched and established discovery-interface practice could contain similar patterns."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A reversible non-production interface prototype and counterbalanced comparison appear technically bounded, although responsive grouping, zoom behavior, keyboard operation, screen-reader structure, and recoverability require careful implementation."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":4,"rationale":"The candidate identifies a plausible product-owner authorization path and relevant governance reviewers, while production approval still depends on library-specific accessibility, privacy, cataloging, and public-service processes."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":4,"rationale":"The packet specifies baseline and rival comparisons, measurable outcomes, problem and intervention falsifiers, participant consent, halt conditions, and rollback; representative task selection and assistive-technology recruitment remain unresolved."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":3,"rationale":"Immediate recovery of deferred fields, protected information classes, accessibility review, halt criteria, and prototype rollback reduce downside, but mistaken absence, hidden evidence, added scrolling, and underrepresented workflows remain material risks."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The design principle could transfer across result templates, but metadata priorities, patron expertise, screen sizes, assistive technologies, discovery platforms, and local governance may require substantial adaptation."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Design and run one non-production, counterbalanced comparison with up to 30 consenting participants across baseline, hierarchy-only, and protected-separation prototypes; include representative tasks, accessibility participation, observation, analysis, and reporting.","confidence":"MODERATE","assumptions":["Existing result templates and representative bibliographic records are available.","The study uses prototypes rather than production integration.","Participant recruitment includes some assistive-technology users without unusually high coordination costs.","Internal design, research, accessibility, and analysis labor is counted as resource-equivalent cost."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Convert a supported prototype into a production-ready implementation for one discovery environment, including responsive behavior, semantic structure, configuration, analytics, accessibility testing, governance review, and rollback preparation.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The existing discovery layer permits template or component modification.","No replacement of the search or ranking system is required.","Source metadata remains intact and deferred information is immediately recoverable.","Vendor contracting or platform customization could materially change the resource requirement."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Launch at one library or bounded library system with staff preparation, production quality assurance, privacy and accessibility review, monitoring, staged release, evaluation, and contingency support.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Initial implementation work has already produced a production-ready component.","Launch is staged rather than global.","No major data migration or catalog remediation is included.","Governance and vendor coordination remain within one institutional deployment."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Maintain the design across interface and metadata changes, conduct accessibility regression checks, monitor reveal use and task failures, respond to patron and staff feedback, and preserve rollback capability for one deployment.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["No dedicated full-time team is required.","Existing monitoring and release infrastructure can be reused.","Major redesigns, platform replacement, and multi-institution support are excluded.","Periodic usability and accessibility checks are included."]}},"research_burden":"MODERATE","earliest_credible_horizon":"0_TO_3_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The candidate describes observable errors, delay, backtracking, and boundary confusion, but explicitly labels them as hypotheses requiring local validation and provides no external or local prevalence evidence."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The library discovery product owner is identified as the prototype-test authorizer, with cataloging, public-service, privacy, accessibility, and library-governance roles specified."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that protected, recoverable separation improves relevance judgment beyond both the dense baseline and a redesign that changes hierarchy while retaining every element."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A non-production study with up to 30 consenting participants, defined comparisons, outcome measures, excluded actions, halt conditions, and rollback is expressly authorized."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate confines testing to a reversible prototype, protects essential information, requires relevant review, and defines explicit accessibility and comprehension halt conditions; these safeguards support testing without authorizing production deployment."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The candidate bounds the prototype population and governance roles but does not specify the discovery platform, customization rights, staffing, recruitment method, integration scope, or operational environment needed to validate implementation costs."}},"blocking_evidence":["Local evidence that attention competition, rather than ranking, query formulation, missing records, or misleading metadata, materially contributes to relevance-selection failures.","Comparative evidence that protected separation improves decision accuracy or efficiency beyond both the current template and hierarchy-only rival without degrading expert comparison or accessibility.","Representative evidence about which fields can be deferred for novice, expert, screen-reader, keyboard, low-vision, zoomed, and small-screen workflows.","Platform-specific evidence on implementation constraints, governance requirements, and resource scope.","Prior-art evidence establishing whether the proposed mechanism and comparison are meaningfully distinct from existing discovery-layer design patterns."],"next_evidence_step":"Run the authorized non-production, counterbalanced three-condition study with up to 30 consenting participants using the dense baseline, hierarchy-only rival, and protected-separation prototype on the same representative search tasks. Code errors attributable to crowding separately from ranking, query, and metadata failures; do not advance if crowding is not implicated or if the prototype shows no meaningful accuracy or time improvement, worsens comprehension or assistive-technology completion, or makes deferred information difficult to recover.","research_questions":["Do patrons actually miss decisive fields or confuse record boundaries because of attention competition, after accounting for ranking, query formulation, missing records, and misleading metadata?","Which bibliographic signals are essential or deferrable across novice, expert, screen-reader, keyboard, low-vision, zoomed, and small-screen workflows?","Does protected separation outperform both the dense baseline and hierarchy-only rival on accuracy, time, backtracking, comprehension, and recovery?","Does increased vertical space impair scrolling efficiency or cross-record comparison, especially for expert users?","Can deferred fields and controls remain immediately discoverable and semantically equivalent for assistive technologies?","How do users interpret visual absence during empty, permission, indexing, uncertainty, error, and network states?","What discovery-platform constraints, governance reviews, and vendor dependencies determine implementation scope and cost?","Does documented prior art already embody the proposed protected-separation mechanism and causal comparison?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["Closed-book assessment provides no evidence of problem prevalence, stakeholder demand, market size, prior-art novelty, realized impact, or effect magnitude.","The authorized sample ceiling may be insufficient for reliable subgroup conclusions, particularly for heterogeneous assistive-technology and expert workflows.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges based on assumed prototype and single-deployment scopes, not platform-specific estimates.","Representative task selection, participant composition, field-priority rules, and the threshold for a meaningful improvement are unspecified.","Production feasibility depends on unknown discovery-platform customization, vendor, analytics, privacy, staffing, and governance conditions."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior-art status is explicitly UNSEARCHED. This assessment credits only the sealed candidate's internally specified mechanism, rival, falsifiers, safety controls, and authority path; it makes no claim that protected separation, recoverable disclosure, or the proposed comparison is novel, uncommon, commercially distinct, or absent from existing library discovery practice."}