(times are offset from the beginning of the experiment run)
[00:02:14-1] So you are not studying any more I gather?
[00:02:14-6] That's right.
[00:02:16-8] So what did you study?
[00:02:30-6] I did theoretical astrophysics, so I suppose it counts as a physics degree. Focus on maths and astrophysics.
[00:02:32-4] So you do some computer programming as part of job, yes?
[00:02:33-4] Yes I do.
[00:02:36-8] OK and did you learn that as part of your course?
[00:02:43-7] No, I actuall knew how to program before I even started university pretty much.
[00:02:44-5] OK.
[00:02:50-6] So as part of your work do you create any diagrams?
[00:03:04-4] Not at the moment. I think I might have to at some stage. But not at the moment. I use to do some diagrams though during my PhD.
[00:03:07-1] What sort of diagrams where they?
[00:03:50-9] Let me think about it. Not sure, can't thin kof an exanmple actually. The only thing that springs to mind at the moment is a diagram to -- how to explain that -- just classify different things, for example tehre's a huge -- if you start doing your phd you're really onfused, reading a lot papers. i nthe field i was doing i was studying neutron stars, and there are different types of neutron stars so i was trying to order them
[00:03:54-5] some sort of hierarchical diagram?
[00:03:55-2] yeah. something like that.
[00:03:58-8] and what tools did you use to create those?
[00:05:03-0] i started using xfig, with moderate success. i also used the google tool, which didn't work as well either. the main problem there was that -- we wanted to have a shared document that people could contirbute to, so we used the google thing for that. but it's quite hard, a bit clumsy. what i also used to do for scientific diagrams, for example a plot of a neutron star with an axis system, mathematical systems, there's a latex environment for that. i can't recall the name but it's pretty good. it's mainly suited to do all sorts of mathematical diagrams, plots, if you want to have an axis system plotting a function there and annotating it.
[00:05:05-3] is it called tix or something like that?
[00:05:09-8] i can look it up.
[00:05:20-6] so basically those tools, those latex related ones, you type in a description of the diagram and it will construct it for you.
[00:05:27-8] yes. i found that to work best.
[00:05:36-1] these diagrams that you created, presumably they were for putting in papers or that kind of situation?
[00:05:53-7] partly. the hierarchical diagram was only for me and some of my fellow students, it was just for us. the stuff with the latex environment i put in my thesis. parts of it i put in papers as well.
[00:06:08-6] and did you ever have to create different versions of the diagrams for different situations. e.g. a large version and a small version? or were they basically just one diagrams?
[00:06:12-9] basically one use. i didn't need to scale them or anything.
[00:06:18-4] yep ok. do you have any experience with doing web page programming?
[00:06:22-8] only very basic ones.
[00:06:27-4] any javascript, dynamic web pages?
[00:06:33-1] i did do some javascript but it was ages ago.
[00:06:36-5] ok.
[00:07:08-6] i'll give you this diagram here to consider. this is a diagram showing a cutaway of the earth and a few of the different layers there, and some labels here describing what the different layers of the earth are. and there are four differetn versions of this diagram. these top two here are small versions, and these ones are large versions. in the columns are different languages.
[00:07:20-4] so if you had to create these four different versions of the diagram with the tools that you are familiar with, how would you go about doing that?
[00:07:55-6] this sort of diagram i would do with latex too, it looks pretty easy. i think the size could be done pretty much automatically, with the size option for the environment. and it would automatically scale it i think. but the language i would probably just write two different sources for that, or come up with a variable for it.
[00:08:17-6] if you considered -- perhaps i need to tweak the appearance of these -- if you consider these bottom two as not just a simple scaling of this one, but perhaps the thickness of the border aroudn these yellow rectangles was the same but the text size was increased, and you weren't able to simply scale it, how would you handle that?
[00:08:35-2] that depends on hwo much time i have. i might try to do some latex programming. since it's just four versions i would just make a different source for each version.
[00:08:50-9] imagine that you've done this and you've got your four different versions of the diagram, and you needed to add an extra label on to it. so an extra part of the earth. how would you do that?
[00:08:53-7] an extra label?
[00:09:05-2] well consider this as one diagram with four different views of it, and you need to add a fourth yellow label. #00:09:03-0#
[00:09:07-8] what would you need to do that?
[00:09:17-0] well i guess i'd just edit [something]
[00:09:22-1] as you were saying you had created different source files for these
[00:09:28-7] yeah. i guess i'd have to edit manually each source file.
[00:10:04-9] ok. and, you said before that you don't have much experience with web page programming, so perhaps you can just guess this one. if you needed to present this diagram on a web page, and you needed it to choose the most appropriate version -- english or german, or different sizes depending on the size of the window or what device it's being presented on, do you have any idea on how you'd go abotu taht?
[00:10:13-9] if it's only just four versions i'd probably create a bmp file for each version and then pick it with some javascript.
[00:10:18-9] yep ok, great.
[00:10:30-8] i don't know if it's really complicated i'd try to come up with some on-the-fly compiling, i don't know.
[00:10:36-2] i suppose with just four of them you can just ...
[00:10:38-5] ok.
[00:10:44-1] next i'll present the tool to you.
(times are offset from the beginning of the second half of the experiment)
[01:17:25-8] the next part of the study is paper based, so that's all we have to do with the tool for today.
[01:17:51-3] so in this part what i'll get you to do is -- there are 3 diagrams i'll give you one at a time, and it'll be a single diagram view that i'll show you, and i'll get you to think up of some adaptations to perform on that diagram for the situation that i have written down with the diagram
[01:18:00-5] so we'll say -- actulaly i'll just show you the first one rather than give you an example
[01:18:19-4] we'll start off with this one. so this is a simple illustration of cell division i think it is. so just have a read of that.
[01:18:43-3] ok so we'd like to make it smaller
[01:18:43-7] yes that's one thing you could do
[01:18:43-0] portrait or landscape
[01:19:15-0] so what i would liek you to do is think of as many changes to the diagram you could make to accommodate this situation, and sketch them on paper, and so i'll give you say 5 minutes or so to do that. but it's not a hard limit so don't feel under pressure to get things done within that time.
[01:19:21-2] so ...
[01:19:37-1] so think about the kinds of adaptation you were able to perform with the tool, so what kinds of things you could change within the diagram in response to the different things that are written here
[01:19:38-5] yeah
[01:19:44-9] and sketch out how the diagram would look in those adapted situations
[01:19:52-8] but you don't have to restrict yourself to the kinds of things that are possible with the tool
[01:19:54-3] not sure i can come up with something else
[01:19:56-1] if you can that's good
[01:19:58-1] but yeah probably not
[01:19:59-8] try to think of others
[01:23:41-0] yeah ok i think i'm pretty mcuh done
[01:23:42-9] so can you explain to me what you've got?
[01:23:58-5] ok so the idea is that you would probably not want all the text in there, because if it's a really small screen, it would look a bit squished
[01:24:08-8] but at the same time you want to have some text because a diagram without anything is not very useful, at least it would irritate me
[01:24:16-0] so my idea was to use some sort of hint thingy
[01:24:31-9] and the idea was to just give basic information about the different stages, call them say "duplication" "growth" and "division" and if you tap on it then it might pop up like an extended view
[01:24:46-7] and the same thing holds for these, so we just need to add some sort of markers so that the user knows that it can actually touch it
[01:24:50-2] maybe pop up something up maybe down here [bottom of the diagram] so it's not in the way
[01:25:02-8] and the horizontal view, landscape orientation, is pretty straightforward i find
[01:25:09-3] how about the text here [in the horizontal view], is this the same as these reduced text labels [in the vertical view]?
[01:25:12-6] they're the same as here yes
[01:25:29-7] so i'm not quite sure, you probably want it up here then it can get squashed a little bit more, and the text doesn't overlap with the shapes, do you know what i mean?
[01:25:36-4] yeah so if this is up here a bit ...
[01:25:37-3] yeah then you can squash it ...
[01:25:37-3] these can come in futher
[01:25:37-8] yeah, exactly. [this is talking about having the text labels in the horizontal version not exactly between the cell images, but just above them so that at narrow widths the images and text won't overlap.]
[01:25:52-7] i'm not sure, maybe you'd like them all aligned up here. they should be reasonably close to --
[01:26:08-3] so i'd also like to ask how you would achieve these effects with the tool, if that's possible. if you think certain things here can't be done with the tool then i'd like to hear that as well.
[01:26:43-9] i think taht should work well. you can do similar things like in the tutorial, so you can say for example have a text box here which is something like "click here" or have a mark, and then make these objects change the text box, these are markers here.
[01:27:05-4] ok and if the diagram had to support this full version as well as these smaller versions for the handheld device, how would you handle the different text strings?
[01:27:15-8] do you think it's possible to do that with the tool?
[01:27:40-3] yeah i'm not sure i'd do that. i'd probably do it by way of just duplicating the main thing and use three different configurations.
[01:27:41-0] ok
[01:27:53-1] because, i'm not quite sure how you could do that otherwise.
[01:28:05-0] all right. and how about for the actual positioning of the actual elements within the diagram, how would you effect that?
[01:28:07-0] with the tool?
[01:28:08-7] yeah
[01:28:19-9] say for this first one here [vertical small view] how would you be positioning the shapes?
[01:28:33-1] hmm
[01:28:49-1] i guess we'd like to let them all stay the same size, right
[01:28:52-3] each of these cell things?
[01:28:53-0] yeah
[01:29:13-0] this one is sort of like a different shape, the dividing cell
[01:29:37-4] there are a couple of things. first of all we'd like them all to be the same size, but i can't put them in a single column because the bottom ones should be ...
[01:29:45-5] ok, so when you say you want these to be the same size, i guess -- both dimensions you want to worry about right?
[01:29:47-3] mmhmm.
[01:29:54-5] so for each of tehse four rows of the cells, you want them to be the same height, is that right?
[01:29:56-4] yes that's right
[01:30:02-3] and for the other dimension how do you want these two to --- in the original these two [top two cell images] are the same width yeah?
[01:30:14-3] i don't know i think i'd like them all to be the same width. otherwise it gives visual hints which might not be justified.
[01:30:15-7] by width do you mean this and this here? [the two halves of the partially split cell]
[01:30:20-7] yeah
[01:30:25-0] i was thinking of thing as one image, or object
[01:30:36-8] yeah this is what i was thinking about, because -- it might not be easily achievable though
[01:30:43-9] ideally this would just be an overlap of these two somehow, with the line between them
[01:30:49-5] but it might not be easy with the tool
[01:30:58-9] how about the positioning of the text in relation to the shapes?
[01:31:19-2] well it should be easy for the explanations up here [the labels pointing to the first cell], we just add a text box and attach it to an arrow and attach an arrow to the thing
[01:31:52-5] with the legend of the arrows, i'm not too sure. we can -- the question is what would we like. we'd like to probably adapt that space between the text and the arrow as well [these are the arrows/text between each step] as i change the horizontal size
[01:31:53-6] yeah
[01:32:29-4] so i guess i'd put like a guideline in here, a vertical one, and align the edges of this -- or maybe align these two things, the text of the two arrows with a vertical guideline and put a spring between the guideline and the arrow, would that work? [something]
[01:32:58-9] this one i'd like to have it in the centre [the bottom-most text]. if this one is just on one object, the two [split] cells we can just align the edges of that one with the top of this one here, and it would stay in the centre
[01:33:29-1] ok and just one final one: so overall, with these three ones, how would you control the positioning and sizing in this direction and this direction [vertically in the original and small vertical views, and horizontally in the small horizontal view]? so for each row of shapes, how would you control the space vertically here, vertically here, and how would you do it horizontally in this one?
[01:34:01-0] i'm not too sure what that actually -- if this is one image, then we could just align these three, but we can't put them in a column, because -- the question is what sort of object the dividing cell is.
[01:34:06-0] ok well assume this is just a single object
[01:34:16-3] so if the size of that object corresponds to -- then you can't do taht
[01:34:30-3] assume that this object [image object for split cell] has a natural width that it gets from being at a certain height
[01:34:34-1] from being at a certain height?
[01:35:00-3] put it another way: comparing this original one and your first adapted version, one of the differences is that this one is shorter than this one. so how in the tool might you have these shapes move so that when it's shorter they are positioned appropriately?
[01:35:02-8] well they would be in a spring distribution somehow right?
[01:35:18-3] just need to make sure that these two are aligned, say with a horizontal guideline
[01:35:30-3] if they're in a spring distribution thent hey should align vertically automatically, right?
[01:35:38-8] yeah. you can't put two objects in the same slot in the spring distribution
[01:35:42-5] could i put the guideline in the spring distribution instead?
[01:35:56-1] you could do that, a downside of that would be that the heights of these objects then wouldn't influence how the objects distribute vertically
[01:35:59-0] oh ok
[01:36:09-1] but probably what i would do is place these two in a row
[01:36:08-7] oh ok
[01:36:10-8] then you can treat them as a compound thing
[01:36:16-8] and then put the row in the spring distribution, that makes sense
[01:36:22-7] ok that's good. next one.
[01:36:33-1] it's a bit fuzzy because i took a raster and scaled it up
[01:36:54-4] ok so this is the same sort of exercise just with a different diagram
[01:37:09-6] yeah well one difference though is that this one the target device doesn't support colour
[01:37:12-4] oh sorry that makes it even harder
[01:37:30-5] because it doesn't supprot colour, and there are quite a few different colours involved they should have similar grey shades, so i'd use patterns instead
[01:37:42-1] can you sketch some different versions of this diagram? obviously you don't need to copy everything, just something representative.
[01:37:58-9] in this landscape orientation you have the two axes here
[01:38:09-7] probably put different bars, whatever they look like
[01:38:15-4] use patterns which are easily distinguishable
[01:38:27-8] ok so the title needs to be there still
[01:38:57-4] need the scaling as well, maybe just a few representative scalings [grid lines / axis number labels]
[01:39:25-8] yeah we probably, in scientific, we need to keep the axis labelling
[01:40:16-9] and i might try to find some space for the different patterns, so that you can click the patterns and get an explanation popping up
[01:40:21-1] it does support touch interaction?
[01:40:21-9] yeah
[01:40:31-3] so if i tap on here then it opens up like a label
[01:40:44-4] it would take a lot space though
[01:40:49-1] but it saves you having to include the whole legend?
[01:40:50-0] yeah
[01:41:19-2] and i think that if it's in portrait mode, i just try to flip around the axes as well so that the percentage becomes the horizontal and the years become the vertical axis
[01:41:33-7] and then the bars are aligned like that [horizontal bars]
[01:41:43-0] and the same thing we need the title
[01:42:01-3] and yeah we need to find some space for the legend
[01:42:20-0] if it's not obvious that they can be touched we need to point that out somehow
[01:42:26-5] i don't know if there's a great way on the ebook readers to indicate that or not
[01:42:29-0] perhaps, don't know
[01:42:32-7] could make them three dimensional or something
[01:42:41-0] looking like buttons?
[01:42:42-1] yeah
[01:42:50-4] that is all or you want more thinking time?
[01:42:51-7] pretty much
[01:43:06-2] yeah that's pretty much all
[01:43:11-4] it's too much data to fit in one bar set, i think
[01:43:20-5] if it would be only two or three sets then one could split the bars like that
[01:43:24-6] stacked bar chart?
[01:43:28-8] yeah. but i think it would get really messy if you try it here.
[01:43:44-4] what else could you do -- considering that there are many bars on this chart, and we now have only a small amount of space, is there any other way you would think of presenting the chart?
[01:44:04-8] you could make it not a bar chart, right, that would be an obvious thing
[01:44:07-6] i didn't know that was an option though
[01:44:10-0] you can think outside the box
[01:44:25-1] in that case i would probably just make it a point-line chart
[01:44:32-9] the question is what you want to get out of the diagram, that depends on the context
[01:44:39-9] in terms of adapting it to this situation, what does turning it into a point-line chart gain you?
[01:44:49-1] well, it would squeeze all these bars [in one group] into one, which would help a lot
[01:44:58-5] if you think about it, a bar chart might not be a good way to present that data in the first place
[01:45:03-4] because one would like to see the change over time
[01:45:18-3] i would agree with that. probably if you were actually trying to convey this information, then useful information si something like "africa is going up like this" but it's kidn of hidden in amongst all the bars isn't it
[01:45:24-4] but that always depends on what you want to say with it
[01:45:32-4] ok good
[01:45:40-9] and the final one is over two pages beacuse i haven't copied this yet
[01:45:47-8] this is another biological one, more of an illustration
[01:46:18-9] it is complicated
[01:46:26-0] yes it is a more complicated diagram
[01:46:49-8] if that's on a web site, i would probably -- it depends on the situation, but i would probably try to make it like an interactive flash diagram
[01:47:27-2] bdcause you'd like to convey the information that it's a closed loop i guess, which if you just give a time sequence might not become obvious
[01:47:42-4] if that makes sense. if i just have say, in the easiest case, just a couple of pictures then if i click on the first one then it shows the second one
[01:47:42-3] like sort of snapshot time?
[01:47:45-8] then it might not be obvious that it's a loop
[01:47:55-4] what is the solution to that? or a solution?
[01:48:02-1] a solution would be to have a loop with numbers on the left side
[01:48:17-2] and on the right side something which is happening, need animations so that if you click on it it moves from here to here
[01:48:22-2] so you know you've moved to a different stage
[01:48:22-6] and what would happen on the right hand side when you do that?
[01:48:48-8] i'm not sure, i think i'd try to make these into animations [point to the sodium things with arrows on the original diagram]
[01:48:56-3] i'm not sure what's happening here, but you probably have these things floating around somehow and coming in and out here
[01:49:05-5] you could have even a continuous animation which runs through continuously
[01:49:12-4] and highlights the ... but maybe not
[01:49:23-3] yeah i think that's pretty hard without knowing what it actually does
[01:49:31-7] you probably want to -- it can only go from this stage to this stage right?
[01:49:42-4] so i think actually you are right that it is a loop that these things -- whatever these grey things are -- do this, then this, then this
[01:49:51-0] yeah because i was just suggestion that you make these interactive, click on 1 and 2
[01:49:57-8] but this doesn't make sense from 1 to 2, within the loop
[01:50:01-2] in a sequence
[01:50:32-8] so maybe, just have a button that advances it by one, and then maybe if you do click on 1 it just resets it without an animation to that snapshot
[01:50:43-1] maybe if you hover the mouse over these numbers then it says something about it
[01:50:58-4] and how about for different amounts of space?
[01:51:21-9] if you do omit the whole text, if it's interactive, then you could have a text box or something
[01:51:44-6] probably if it's big enough then i would have all these labels and the shapes still, but if you squeeze it then you might want to take it out
[01:51:50-2] just a shape without a label, and then add a legend, or maybe not
[01:51:54-0] maybe just let the user hover over it
[01:52:02-4] but that might not work if they're moving around, you'd need to catch it
[01:52:07-5] probably a legend or something would be good
[01:52:14-4] i'm not very good with designing
[01:52:15-6] that's ok
[01:52:24-6] some time to think of any others?
[01:52:48-6] if we leave it in a non-interactive or less interactive way, you'd probably just want to have basic shapes in a loop
[01:53:07-9] and probably do a similar thing like here, where you have a one word summary of the different stages and if you hover your mouse above it it pops up maybe
[01:53:19-4] maybe even a stylised version of
[01:53:21-0] rather than?
[01:53:28-6] there are all these details in here [small things in the original diagram like the little circles around the cell border]. but it's probably nice to have them.
[01:53:44-9] not sure what more i can think of
[01:53:51-3] so you think these adaptations you could do with the tool?
[01:53:55-9] this one i think i could do yeah
[01:54:01-5] so that's the stylised less interactive version?
[01:54:12-3] yeah. although it might be hard to do the positioning right. probably could align these two
[01:54:18-5] so your concern is that this is circular? and you don't have circular control?
[01:54:18-5] yeah
[01:54:37-5] what if you had this original one as well as the stylised and interactive one, do you think you could encode the adaptation from this [original] to this [adapated versions] with the tool? do you think the tool provides you with what you'd need to do it?
[01:54:42-4] if i had this one [original] in the tool?
[01:54:44-4] yeah
[01:54:49-3] i guess it would
[01:54:57-3] what specifically would you use to go from this to this one?
[01:55:07-7] the text box is pretty easy, with interaction for the different stages
[01:55:17-7] the question is how stylised this version would be. it'd be a change of shapes.
[01:55:23-6] if it does, then it probably doesn't make a lot of sense
[01:55:29-3] if it needs to change shape?
[01:55:30-0] yeah
[01:55:34-5] why is that?
[01:55:41-0] because then i need to change the shape of each thing individually
[01:55:47-8] might as well just start a new diagram
[01:56:03-5] i guess you have to judge how much commonality there is between this one and this one, to see how much you gain out of it
[01:56:12-7] ok and i forgot to ask you before with the bar chart one, how you could achieve these adaptations with the tool
[01:56:27-8] so with this one you had some omitted axis labels, the points
[01:56:35-3] and fewer lines, and fewer labels on the x axis as well
[01:56:40-0] is that something you could do with the tool?
[01:56:46-4] in response to being squeezed down, automatically?
[01:56:48-0] yeah
[01:57:01-4] ok that is given that we have a proper chart, right, because you wouldn't want to try to design the different bars in the tool
[01:57:03-2] with just rectangles?
[01:57:15-9] yeah. first of all, it would be a lot of work to do so. the second thing is that you wouldn't get right anyway. it wouldn't be very scientific.
[01:57:32-3] omitting the labels as a response to change in size -- i'm not sure how that would work
[01:57:48-7] i don't know actually if you could do that
[01:57:52-3] could you?
[01:58:15-8] you could, i think at some level, you could have multiple configurations where one of the configurations has fewer labels, and switch automatically based on that. not sure how handy that is to create in that way, though.
[01:58:28-7] ok i see. right, you could have multiple configurations and automatically pick the one that is the most appropriate size.
[01:58:33-5] but does it give a penalty for configurations, if say the labels overlap?
[01:58:48-7] i didn't show you, but there is a -- you can add some conditions on the configuration that particular objects don't overlap, and if they do overlap then it renders the whole configuration invalid
[01:58:51-7] ok i see, then that would work
[01:59:06-6] but it doesn't have something automatic, like choosing how many labels to show automatically based on how much space there is
[01:59:24-0] but you could make three configurations and if these labels start overlapping, then you just have like three labels
[01:59:36-4] then the question is how you make it flip over from portrait to landscape. but this is like the ebook reader would tell you which configuration to use in that case, right?
[02:00:12-0] you could also -- ok so one thing the tool doesnt' allow you to do at the moment is explicitly say that a certain configuration is valid at a given display size, or orientation, you can implicitly do that by placing the objects in spring distributions for example and rely on minimum sizes so that it only works out to be valid for certain sizes.
[02:00:12-0] ok right that's true
[02:00:24-8] but it might be easier doing it that way [explicit valid sizes]
[02:00:32-1] and how about the legend?
[02:00:50-7] well you could make it like a revealed object, so it just reveals a text label according to what legend it is
[02:01:02-2] i think that might be the best option, because you don't want to waste space by including this box here [the whole legend from the original]
[02:01:06-2] how about the positioning of the legend itself?
[02:01:39-4] you don't want it to be in the way of the -- it might actually be easier, if there's enough space in here...
[02:01:59-2] i think we just add a spring distribution or two springs here, and attach them back to the bottom and top line of the image so that it would stay in the image
[02:02:10-4] that might risk though that the bars and the legend overlap. but at some stage you can't avoid that, it's in the image right.
[02:02:21-1] although it if shrinks with the same ratio as the image it should be all right
[02:02:28-6] ok great
(times are offset from the beginning of the second half of the experiment)
[02:03:00-6] so i want to ask you these few questions about diagram adaptation in general, and about the tool itself and what you thought of it
[02:03:19-2] firstly i want to ask if you think thinking of a diagram as a single, logical diagram that has some adaptation behaviour in it, for different contexts, is a sensible one and a useful one
[02:03:30-0] do you think it makes sense to think of a single, complete diagram that has multiple views of itself?
[02:03:54-1] yeah i think that's a useful concept. it certainly makes sense because a diagram is basically just a way of conveying information. like a particular diagram is just a view on the information, so yeah i think that logic makes sense.
[02:04:11-4] the tool that you used supports constructing these diagrams that adapt for a number of different reasons, so i want to go through each of those different reasons and ask you what you thought about the way the tool allowed you to specify those things
[02:04:57-5] so firstly, one of the simpler ones was that it allowed you to adapt to the user's preferred language, and the way it did that was by choosing the string to display at display time, based on the user's preference, and you specified that by putting different text strings for each of the shapes for the different languages. maybe you can comment on whether you thought that was a useful way to achieve multi-language diagrams or whether you think that any other way of specifying that would be better?
[02:05:22-8] no i think it's good. another way of specifying it would be to have like a common translation table, but i think it's more clear if you specify it directly in the particular item, because otherwise you have to deal with placeholders. so yeah i think it's good.
[02:05:47-5] to adapt to large differences in available space, you constructed diagrms that have major layout changes. for example a horizontal and vertical version of the diagram. and the way you achieved that was to create those in sepaprate configurations that were automatically selected based on which one is valid. what do you thin kof that?
[02:06:20-4] i think that makes sense, because you're -- yeah i think it makes sense. you've got the differences too big that you could specify in one common way. if you flip over from portrait to landscape orientation, it's a completely different layout.
[02:06:37-9] so despite being a completely different layout, there are still common things between those two configurations then. the way you created a separate configuration is that these are two distinct things?
[02:06:59-5] i was thinking about that earlier. it would be good for example if you change something minor in one configuration that it would automatically take it over in the other configuration. but i guess the question is how to specify that without being confusing to the user.
[02:07:15-0] it would be good if you could identify the objects within different configurations, to know that they're essentialyl the same object?
[02:07:16-0] yeah
[02:08:07-8] with the master objects that you used for re-use in small parts, e.g. the arrow labels in theearth structure diagram, effectively they are references back to the same object because they're all instances from that one thing. but using master objects for basically the whole configuration it doesn't really work in the tool. there's a restriction in the tool that you can only create instance of these master objects in the configuration. you can't create them in other master objects, so you can't create hierarchically build them up. do you think that would be a useful feature if you were able to do that?
[02:08:23-2] i think that would be confusing, if you start thinking of it as a hierarchy. i would need to use the tool a bit longer to make a judgement about that.
[02:09:10-8] to adapt to small changes in available space, and to the sizes of shapes which might change due to font size or language because the text strings make them bigger or smaller, you specified different minor layouts using the layout tools in there, the guidelines and the spring distributions to position and resize objects within the one configuration. did you find that an effective way to specify the minor layout changes of the diagram?
[02:10:16-6] yeah i guess so. i find the main screen a bit confusing at stages, when there are so many elements at the same time, and they've got different colours and stuff. but i think for positioning elements you need springs and guidelines. off the top of my head i can't think of another way to do that more clearly. i guess it's just a way of presenting it, not quite sure. there are a lot of animaitons going on as well, if you choose the interaction window then the window disappears and then comes back again.
[02:10:16-6] was that confusing?
[02:10:31-0] i found that a bit confusing. you need to get it out of the way, so you can pick the objects you want to i guess.
[02:10:50-3] how the way springs distribute space to the objects that are inside the spring distributions. did that make sense to you?
[02:10:55-2] yeah, it does. do you mean like how much space it decides?
[02:11:09-8] so the way they work with a preferred size, and a minimum size and the stretchiness of the springs, how that in the end turns into "this object is this large, and this object is this large"
[02:11:20-4] i haven't played around with it for a whole, but it seems to be pretty intuitive, as in you don't need to change a lot of things so that it does what you want it to do
[02:11:56-0] to adapt to the display medium supporting colour or black and white or greyscale and so on, you styled the objects and used the palette to change how the default mapping of styles is in the other colour modes. thinking about that, and the way that the palette is a global thing that all the objects reference, can you make some comments on that?
[02:12:12-7] i think it's a good thing that it's global, because otherwise it would get confusing i think. i just didn't realise it at the beginning. but it does make sense.
[02:12:26-6] and the way that you override the defaults black and white versions of the entries in the palette? is that sensible?
[02:12:31-8] with the radio button in there?
[02:12:32-7] yeah
[02:12:47-8] yeah, it is. so it lets you choose between automatically computed value and ... yeah i think it made sense
[02:13:05-3] did you find the defaults for that made sense most of the time, or you thought you had to override the defaults?
[02:13:22-1] i think the defaults made sense for the greyscale, but not for the monochrome too much. i would probably try to use patterns instead of -- at the moment it looks like the colours had a threshold
[02:13:46-1] in fact that is how i do it, and it results in it looking a bit ugly because even the antialiased drawing is then converted into black and white. i'll fix that so that it looks a bit nicer, but it's true that the way the default entries in the palette work is based on a threshold. do you think there's any alternative you would suggest?
[02:13:47-6] maybe a pattern.
[02:14:28-7] not sure. usually -- there's two different ways you could do this, you could either choose a different pattern, horizontal stripes or something. but i think that would make it look uglier. probably would try to use one pattern which just translated different greyscales using different density of the pattern. for example using dots, and you could make denser dots.
[02:14:31-4] like in newspaper printing?
[02:14:32-3] yes
[02:14:35-9] and choosing that automatically?
[02:14:36-6] yes
[02:15:36-2] to adapt to the interactive capabilities of the device that the diagram is targetting, you're able to attach interaction events on to certain objects, and there were two actions you could perform on that. one was the show and hide an object, and the other was switching the alternative that a master object was shown as. can you comment on how well that mechanism works for what you were trying to do in those situations? so for example for teh show and hide, the revealing the object, in the earth one where you had the hotspots on the image, can you say something about that?
[02:15:51-2] was it a useful thing? i think so. i mean, i don't think you'd want more complicated interaction than that with a normal diagram.
[02:16:08-7] no i think it made sense. i think it's good actually.
[02:16:21-3] and the other one where you use master objects to have alternative presentations of the same logical object, and using the interaction to switch between those? did you find that confusing?
[02:16:55-1] no i found it very clear. but then i'm familiar with the concept of objects and inheritance and stuff like that, so i was wondering if someone else might not find that obvious. but then i guess most web designers shoudl have some knowledge, maybe not. i think if they should be able to write javascript... ok maybe not.
[02:17:01-3] no i thought the concept was pretty good
[02:17:11-9] in general then, do you have any other comments on the way the authoring tool allowed you to achieve particular adaptations?
[02:17:41-1] no again i guess i'd need to use it a bit more to make a reasonable judgement on that. but i think it worked pretty well. as i said the only thing i found that was a bit confusing was that there were so many different things on the screen at the same time. if you move something and it wants to attach to some objects.
[02:17:41-9] ok
[02:18:18-8] maybe the tabbed view is a good idea, but if you completely delete all the other content then it doesn't help a lot either, because you don't know which springs you want to attach something to. do you know what i mean? if you say "show only the springs without any context" then you don't necessarily know which spring you want. so maybe something that just highlights the springs and fades the rest out would be a useful feature.
[02:18:54-6] imagine that you needed to create some diagrams that adapt to different circumstances like the ones you saw today, and you had a fully developed version of this tool, that could export these diagrams to a web page for example, would you find it easier to do it with the tools you're familiar with already or with such a tool with all of the bugs removed and polished?
[02:19:54-4] no i think i'd probably use your tool, if it's different versions [of diagrams]. i can't really say because the diagrams that i needed to do mainly were where i had to calculate values. like mathematical diagrams where i want some function plotted, which would be hard to do with your tool. ok the way that i do it would be to create the diagrams with whatever can calcaulte them and then export them to your format.
[02:20:04-0] or the other way around maybe -- if your tool had import functions
[02:20:14-8] to have that sort of functionality built in? to be able to specify calculated shapes?
[02:20:43-2] no i don't think so. maybe with plugins or whatever, but i don't really believe in one tool for everything, being a linux user. so i prefer different tools for things. i'd rather have a well specified interface that i can make my own tools export to yours. that would be easiest.
[02:21:02-8] do you thin kdiagramming tools should support this kind of adaptive diagrams? do you think it's a useful task to be able to perform?
[02:21:50-2] yeah in general i think so. it wouldn't be useful for me because i'm not in the situation of needing to make diagrams for different output media, but yeah i think in general it would be a good idea. thinking about it, it might actually be worthwhile to go one step further and just give the tool an abstract idea of the information that you'd like to show and so it automatically chooses the presentation. not sure how you would achieve such a thing though.
[02:22:17-4] for example with the bar chart one, i guess that's one that you can easily see waht the abstract information is that you're presenting, a table of numbers for example. so would you think a way of mapping that abstract information into graphical information would help with that situation?
[02:22:23-9] a tool that can do it automatially?
[02:23:25-2] if you were to try to construct this bar chart in this tool, then it's not quite a good fit right because you don't want to be sizing rectangles yourself and so on. but if you could take the underlying information, the numerical information, and somehow have a populated bar chart that you could then edit your adaptations into, would that be a useful way to solve that situation? or would you go completely towards the other end and just have a specialised thing for bar charts like existing tools do today, where you put the numbers into excel and press a button and get a bar chart?
[02:24:31-6] i'm not sure. if your tool had a plugin which automatically reads in the numbers for a bar chart and could automatically construct something with restrictions, wahtever they are, that would be pretty good i think. this is sort of what i meant by "one step further", where you abstractly describe the information and the tool automaticalyl picks the right way of presenting it according to the particular situation that you are in, but i guess that would be kind of hard to achieve.
[02:24:59-1] i think in general, but perhaps with a plugin that could -- if you could write a plugin that took numerical information which would then tell the tool to ahve shapes in the diagram with certain properties, heights and so on, but still be able to edit the rest of the diagram to perform the adaptation?
[02:25:35-9] you probably want it to be a bit smarter, because you want tit to automatically rotate the bar chart, the axes and so on. so you might rather than have the plugin translate the information into obejcst your tool can handle, you probably wnat some sort of object that is rendered by the plugin, maybe that'd be even harder.
[02:25:38-5] any other final comments you have?
[02:25:42-8] no.