  Properly annotated multimedia content is crucial for supporting advances in
many Information Retrieval applications. It enables, for instance, the
development of automatic tools for the annotation of large and diverse
multimedia collections. In the context of everyday sounds and online
collections, the content to describe is very diverse and involves many
different types of concepts, often organised in large hierarchical structures
called taxonomies. This makes the task of manually annotating content arduous.
In this paper, we present our user-centered development of two tools for the
manual annotation of audio content from a wide range of types. We conducted a
preliminary evaluation of functional prototypes involving real users. The goal
is to evaluate them in a real context, engage in discussions with users, and
inspire new ideas. A qualitative analysis was carried out including usability
questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. This revealed interesting
aspects to consider when developing tools for the manual annotation of audio
content with labels drawn from large hierarchical taxonomies.
