Recommendation use-cases and stuff

[Ivan Cukic]

Fania and I talked a week ago and decided to put some recommendation use-
case ideas on paper.

Here are some of the things we talked about (my thoughts on those, some 
shared by Fania) and ideas on possible recommendations.

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Legend:
 + I'm for this
 ? I'm impartial
 - I'm against

General ideas for the currently possible stuff
  + Items get into recommendations only if those are not shown
    on the /desktop/ in one of the resource boxes
  - highest ranked files (most likely already on the desktop)
  - highest ranked contacts (same as above)
  + highest rated non-document-related applications
    while we are building a document-oriented shell, there are
    applications that don't deal with documents at all (like
    the calculator for example) - score those based on
    the usage and show as a recommendation
  + merge with (some) notifications?
    Responding to a missed call which is something in the
    notifications history can be considered as a recommendation
    to return the call, or send an SMS or an email.
  ? recommend to turn on/off the sounds, to switch activities,
    or similar on location change (for example, the user goes
    to work where he doesn't want his phone to ring)
    The reason I'm impartial regarding this is that this is
    a feature that I want (and use on my current phone) but I'm
    not really sure it should be in recommendations instead of
    being an option that the user can explicitly decide - for
    example, when I enter my faculty building, the phone
    automatically switches off all sounds - seems better than
    to have it as a recommendation



Specific use-cases (not considering technical plausibility much*):
  + When you're at the airport check-in, it'd be quite nice
    for your device to recommend to open the online-check-in
    barcode
  + When you are in a place that you don't know well - a foreign
    city, and you've set your 'starting' location (a hotel)
    the device could recommend to start the navigation application
    to show you the route to your hotel, or alternatively to
    some other place
  + When you are in a foreign place, and you took more than /n/
    photos, recommend to add them to the user's online gallery.
  + If you are planning a trip, recommend checking the weather
    conditions for the time of travel
  + If there were a lot of changes to contacts, photos etc.
    and the user hasn't synced the device in a while, recommend
    syncing (to remote server, to local computer if in range etc.)
  + If the device is near another /master/ device, and those are
    paired, recommend to open the currently active document from
    the master device onto this one.

Global versus specific recommendations:
  + If an e-mail application opens a message that contains
    some data about a scheduled event, it is normal for it to
    show a recommendation to add the event to the calendar.
    IMO, this should be done via the shell's recommendation
    menu to avoid having duplicate UI items for the same thing
    (one in the app, and the other in the shell)


The technical issue with all non usage-based-scoring-based :)
recommendations is that it needs separate implementations for
each and every use-case, sometimes even with the need for some
specific application to cooperate.

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Cheerio
-- 
Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.
  -- Floyd Dell