Recommendation use-cases and stuff

[Fania Jöck]

Hi,

Am 02.07.2011 13:48, schrieb Marco Martin:
> On Saturday 02 July 2011, Ivan Cukic wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>> -----
>>
>> 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)
> if would be easy have only those that do -not- appear in the desktop could
> make sense, otherwise yeah, there is no point
Exactly, so we could agree on listing them in case they are not yet 
listed in the activity. So for example the user always calls Pete when 
the Activity XY is opened. Pete is not yet a resource in the activity, 
so actually Contour could suppose adding him. If the resource is already 
listed in the activity, the context menu shows enough recommended 
options, so no need for that.
>>    + 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
> +1
>>    + 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.
So, if the person that called the user, is within the activity, the call 
gets a higher rank and priority and is therefore listed also in the 
recommendation overlay. Or if a person wants to chat with me and is also 
listed in the activity - this chat request could be forwared to the 
recommendation overlay. The question is just, if not the normal 
notifications are more likely to be seen by the user, as they are 
globally in the system in some prominent layout I suppose, so simply 
repeating them makes not much sense.

>>    ? 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
> a recommendation could make sense, but it could be linked to the activity
> itself, so when you entr in the building the activty gets changed with all the
> liniked settings...
> however, i think there is no point discussing this now, since there is no way
> on earth any phone related feature can get into the first release, at this
> point

For me this is the question of a "global recommendation" overlay. 
Sometimes we have recommendations like displaying a map at a new place 
I've never been or maybe switching the ringtone to vibration when I am 
walking in the middle of a parade...Or dimming the light, when its 
night. These things might not be related to a specific activity, but 
behave more global. So we might need a place to put those 
recommendations as well.
By the way: what do we have currently as sensor inputs? Can we also 
analyse for example the loudness/luminosity etc and use for our 
recommendations? Mhhh, maybe in Active V.3.0 :)

>> 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.
Thats actually ShareLikeConnect, no?

>>    + 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)
> all good, but also on that, remember actual feasability ;p
>
>> 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.
> so, there could be a couple of proof of concept examples with maybe a couple
> of very little apps developed as examples
>
Cheers,
Fania