RE: Demoscript

Hi Mark, thanks for the summary of our discussion.  By the way, I don't think we have to show all six permutations of 3 choose 2; it is sufficient to show that the user can proceed in whichever direction he or she considers useful.  A couple of changes of browse type during the course of the script should be enough to establish this flexibility.

-----Original Message-----
From: www-rdf-dspace-request@w3.org [mailto:www-rdf-dspace-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Butler, Mark
Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 9:19 AM
To: SIMILE public list
Subject: Demoscript


Hi team,

Kevin and I were discussing the demo script yesterday. I'd like to share some of these thoughts with the team. First we've spoken a bit about browsing and searching, but I think there are at least three distinct activities here:

i) drill down browsing "I'll know what I want when I find it"  
i.e. we start with a large number of resources and identify a subset of resources. This is the type of browsing occurring in faceted search.

ii) related browsing "I want something like that"
i.e. we start with a single resource and identify a wider set of resources, e.g. a see a picture I like, then click on the creator to find other similiar pictures. David Karger notes the importance of this type of browsing in the Haystack position paper.

iii) search / query "this is a description of what I want"
i.e. we specify a set of constraints, and retrieve the set of resources that meet those constraints.

So I guess the novelty here is I'm proposing that there is subtle difference between i) and ii), and when we write the demo script ideally we want to demonstrate both. When Kevin and I talked, it became apparent that I'd been thinking about demos that used i) whereas Kevin was thinking more about ii) and iii). In addition we can combine these approaches e.g.

iv) "I'll know what I want when I see it, but I want to be able to find other related things" this is i) then ii)

v) "I'm not quite sure what I want, so I'll get rid of things I definitely don't want, then try to describe what I want" this is i) then iii)

So we have at least five different approaches here.

The other point is that Kevin's script describes starting with OCW data and moving to the Artstor data. This is because we have much more Artstor data than OCW data, so it is easy to show value moving that way. However, ideally we need to come up with a scenario that moves the other way. This is because the Artstor data is easier to do i) on, so if we want to demonstrate iv) then it might be easier if we start with the Artstor data?

Does this make sense? Any comments?

Dr Mark H. Butler
Research Scientist                HP Labs Bristol
mark-h_butler@hp.com
Internet: http://www-uk.hpl.hp.com/people/marbut/

Received on Friday, 5 December 2003 13:56:59 UTC