Comments from answers to assignment 2

19 Sep 2006
Lynda Hardman

These are experimental research prototypes to try out new
ideas, not commercial products.   (E.g. don't criticise not running on IE.)
When you describe an aspect of an interface, then also state what is
good and what is bad about it. Just describing what it does does not
help you to think about improved designs.


Desirable but not in example systems:
SW should help people, give them advice


Positive aspects:
flexible
adaptive
adaptable by user
well structured interface
appealing 
choose any search path
tutorial available
explore
browsing top down and bottom up
minimum  of CHIP.
detailed information available
"MyArt", MyMusic for collecting things of interest
Link to rest of Web (E.g. Google, wikipedia)
Search one step better than Google results,
    e.g. vivisimo (http://vivisimo.com/) gives contexts, categories
underlying semantics/technology hidden
    

Negative aspects:
relationship search not mature enough
slow reaction time (these are prototypes)
technology centric not user centric

CHIP:
Like the flow of the interface.
Browse for something you like, fuzziness of search.
Don't need lots of effort.  Know what you like, don't know about art.
System takes care of what is in the background, e.g. categories hidden.

Can't search for known works to give them a high rating
Cannot remove themes or rankings once have entered them
Pictures offered only one at a time.
Rating tedious
Doesn't take negative ratings into account.
No help information.
"Main quiz page" not indicated.
Not clear that in which order that art work is presented
Not clear which category art work belongs to
Not clear strategy for recommendation 
Doesn't what exactly did you like in this picture:
    e.g theme or color or art type, technique or material 
Use of taxonomy frustrating, since don't know what it is and different
    from own taxonomy (e.g. don't like blue/religious images).
Doesn't show a few paintings with similar properties
    

/facet
Not stable enough to evaluate properly  :-(
Select ranges of dates (found by anyone?)
Constraint selection sometime confusing (architect, artist then female)
Make better use of 2D layout to display relationships
Don't want to aee: "rdf type", "aat:concept", "vp preferred parent" etc.
Needs better "time query" explanation.
Ralation search interface difficult to use for obvious relationships.

mSpace
Sometimes mismatch of mental model.
Not obvious which categories are useful in the LH column
    (e.g. year of death is not useful) .
When only one item is in a box still need to select it.
Adds no extra information (no inferencing),
    "just" selecting "what is already there" .
Additional information (MSpace) outwith MSpace paradigm.
    I.e. use the facets to select info and then suddenly get
    the Google info as an "add-on"