The CollectionSpace functional team and community work together to design and develop features and functionality that supports the day-to-day work of collections professionals. 

The design process begins with information gathering. Sources include published museum standards (e.g. SPECTRUM and Cataloging Cultural Objects), domain-specific guidelines (e.g. the Visual Resources Association), and use cases submitted by colleagues and implementing institutions. The information is then synthesized to create a requirements page. Each requirements page includes a definition, list of requirements (some of which may or may not be developed), links to existing standards and guidelines, and relevant schema, use cases, user stories, and wireframes. The requirements page is refined as items are considered for including within a release to break down the entirety of the functionality into smaller pieces. The project team is always interested in institutional use cases which help us expand our functional requirements, create inclusive designs, and develop services that accurately reflect our community's needs. We welcome you to add your institutional use-case to any of the pages listed below. 

Once the desired requirements for a new feature, piece of functionality, or procedure are settled, the requirements are broken down into user stories and entered into the CollectionSpace issue tracker to be added to the "backlog" for a specific release. A user story is a short, simple descriptions of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new capability, usually a user or customer of the system. They typically follow a simple template: "As a < type of user >, I want < some goal > so that < some reason >."

User story definition via: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/agile/user-stories

In June and July 2016, UX designer Tim Stutt completed a UX review of the application with existing CSpace users. The final report from this review can be found here.