Recommendation use-cases and stuff

[Marco Martin]

This message is actually from Fania.
for some reasons it doesn't seem to get trough.
can somebody check if she got in some auto discard list in the server or 
something?

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Betreff: 	Re: Recommendation use-cases and stuff
Datum: 	Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:10:08 +0200
Von: 	Fania Jöck <fania.joeck at basyskom.de>
An: 	active at kde.org



Hi,

As Ivan already started in posting about the recommendations, I would
also like to share more ideas and concept of the recommendations with you:
- Recommendations are the other essential part of Contour next to the
activities and should be therefore displayed in a prominent way. But
they should at the same time be integrated into the running system and
the workflow of the user and may not disturb.
- Characteristics of the recommendations are: helpful, informative,
adaptive, flexible, understandable, reduced to the essence, self learning

Currently we have 3 different categories in the UI Design, where the
recommendations are influencing:
1. Recommendations overlay: showing related recommendations to the
current activity, based on the resources within the activity and the
user actions taken place while the activity is open
2. Context-Menu with dynamic recommendations menu: depending on the
resource type, the context menu shows different option, that are
dynamically influenced by recommendations
3. Dynamic Ordering of the activity thumbnails in the activity switcher:
depending on the context, the ordering of the activities in the switcher
wheel should display the most important activities, that are recommended
to the user now, because of the current time, location, past usage

1. Recommendations Overlay
(http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/Contour_RecommendationOverlay.jpg):

- Recommendations entries always have a call-to-action verb to provoke
an action, like "open file", "add contact"
- These recommendations are related to the current activity, but also to
the current context: So, for example, if the activity "Grandmas 90s
birthday" is selected and the user is currently at home, the
recommendations could be:
     - chat with mum (she is part of the current activity and she is
online right now)
     - add contact "Herta" to this activity (often contacted while this
activity has been open and not yet added to activity)
     - listen to MUSE (no resource in this activity, but often used in
this context = at home, its evening)
     - open video-folder (no resource in this activity, but often used
in this context = time, evening)
- When the user activated a recommendation by touch, it is not shown
again (for example "add this file to current activity"); only when the
reason for the recommendation is renewed, it pops up again (like "call
your mum, she rang 3 times this morning")
- It would be nice to have a visual representation of the recommendation
as well, for example icons or thumbnails, to avoid a boring text list
and make the recommendations easily distinguishable

2. Context-Menu
(http://share.basyskom.com/contour/UIDesign/Contour_ContextMenu_2-1.jpg)
- We already had discussions about the context menu and its options.
Currently it shows different options  depending on the resource type.
For example:
     - contact: call, write Email, start chat
     - document: send via Mail, duplicate, rename
     - location: open in foursquare browser, tag as important, open in map
- Those options should change depending on the current recommendation
also. For example one contact is online in chat, so "start chat" could
be one option, while for another contact "call him" is more important,
because he rang me 2 times.
- Actually the amount of options should be limited to a maximum of 3
options plus "delete" (open question here: how can the user reach the
other options then?)
- Share Like Connect is depending on each resource as well, so in my
opinion it makes sense to integrate that feature as well in the context
menu and not above in the panel (in case a current activity is opened).

3. Dynamic Ordering of activity switcher
- depending on the context, the ordering of the activities in the
switcher wheel should display the most important activities, that are
recommended now to the user, because of the current time, location, past
usage etc
- The usecase is: the user walks from the office to the metro. Currently
he is still working on a project, so activity project XY is open. But
normally on the metro he checks his emails, listen to music and watches
youtube videos. So either he has an activity for that, so this activity
would be the first in the order. Or activities that has been opened
often at that time and location are presented as the first ones.
- Of course this system only works if Contour really gets the best bet
and likeliness of what the user wants right now. If we always fail here
and only show random activities, this might be rather annoying. To show
every activity ever created, we still have the Overview-Icon in the
switcher to show all in alphabetical order (implemented in step2).

Context saving
- There is a discussion if the user should save locations/context as
specific context, for example "my Office", "at home", "My gym" etc
- That would allow to save locations that are valuable for the user with
a specific name; if the users stays at one place longer then 8 (?)
hours, Contour asks him if the place is relevant to him and if he would
like to save/mark it
- These special places could also influence the recommendations: if an
action is taken in one of those marked context, its more relevant to the
user.
- The detected context could be also displayed in the menubar, so that
the user becomes aware of the systems capability


-- 
Fania Jöck
Interaction Designer

basysKom GmbH
Robert-Bosch-Str.7 | 64293 Darmstadt | Germany
Tel: +49 6151 870589 122 | Fax: +49 6151 3969 736
fania.joeck at basyskom.de | www.basyskom.de

Handelsregister: Darmstadt HRB 9352
Geschaeftsfuehrung: Eva Brucherseifer


-----------------------------------------
-- 
Marco Martin