Recommendations workflow

[Ivan Cukic]

Hi all,

I see a problem with a current idea/implementation of how the 
recommendations are presented to the user. Well, actually, two problems, 
but one is more important.

Problem number 1

Recommendations are not a part of the normal user workflow, but are 
presented in a separate UI.

For example, Alice wants to add a photo to the activity.

Normal workflow:
- open the image viewer application
- find the image
- add it to the activity

Workflow with recommendations:
- open the recommendations panel
- if the image is there, click 'open in current activity'
- if not, close the recommendations panel
- open the image viewer application
- find the image
- add it to the activity

Another example, Bob wants to see the schedule for the buses at the bus 
stop:

Normal workflow:
- Open a web browser
- Navigate to the bus line web site
- Find the bus you need

Workflow with recommendations:
- open the recommendations panel
- if the bus line schedule is in, click it
- if not, close the recommendations panel
- open the image viewer application
- find the image
- add it to the activity

So, the problem is that the recommendation panel is not a part of any 
standard/normal workflow, and I don't think that anybody will first open-
and-close the recommendations before each task they do, but rather forget 
about them altogether.


*** Problem number 2

The second problem is about the recommendation ordering. Currently, we 
have the score-based ordering which makes sense to some degree.

The problem is that this way, we will get quite a few completely different 
actions mixed together. For example:

Open book.png in the current activity
Pause the playing media
Call grandma Ola
Open article.txt  in the current activity
Get the bus line schedule
Open www.google.com in the current activity

I'd propose some categorization here, and if that goes through, we could 
add the system notifications that have actions to a separate category in 
the UI.


Cheerio,
Ivan





-- 
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh,
otherwise they'll kill you.
~ Oscar Wilde