Scenarios/Storytelling

[Michael Rudolph]

Hello everyone,

here is the scenario I've been talking about for a while now. It's 
supposed to be part of "the ways of the plasma",
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Plasma/TheWaysOfThePlasma
where, in a first part, I have outlined some problems that exist with 
current user interfaces, and that plasma sets out to solve. In the 
following part, I try to collect a small number of scenarios, to 
illustrate how plasma could indeed solve those problems.

The introduction to this next part: How plasma can solve real problems, 
will be like this:

"In the following we will sketch out a handful of usage scenarios, that 
take into consideration the troubles outlined so far.
These are ideas, that may or may not be implemented through Plasma in 
the future. Their sole purpose is to show how an unimpeded view on user 
interface design may yield interesting and new concepts for interaction 
of humans with computers."

If you (yes: you) have already started with sketching out scenarios or 
personas, I'd be glad to hear from you, so we can better coordinate our 
efforts.

Without further ado, I'll just paste the little story here. Fell free to 
ask any questions.
I made some illustrations, for me to better understand, what I'm talking 
about. Now they're on flickr and also for you to better understand.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelrudolph/sets/72157605421851381/

----8<----------------

Doing research:

Imagine a young student, call her Maria, who's researching a topic for a 
presentation for one of her seminars.

She's starting her work by opening the lid of her laptop computer and 
her system wakes to a mind map of all her digital life. Instead of 
looking at a regular computer desktop cluttered with a panel and an 
oftentimes wild assortment of icons, symbolizing various things, 
ranging from applications to hardware, to files, she's presented with 
her work as she sees it. There are "University", Hobbies" and "Private" 
prominently standing out on her desktop as the main topics in her life.

Instead of clicking through a start menu full of applications, Maria is 
navigating through her work as she visualizes it. Related 
to "University" there are the entries for all her seminars, with her 
current ones being larger than past ones. And then there's a "Logic 
Theory" node in her mind map. This represents the seminar she's doing 
the research for, so Maria creates a child node there, representing the 
task of researching for her presentation. She names it "presentation on 
modal logic" and if she wants to, she can also give a short summary for 
her new node.

When Maria zooms in on that newly created node, she sees a project 
management view of the task. The name and her summary are there, but 
additionally she can also set a due date, give a priority or can select 
a number of collaborators from her address book: her supervisor and 
probably other students, who work together with her. This project 
management view is customizable, so Maria can choose how much control 
she needs for the node "modal logic". If she wants to, she can also 
download new types of nodes directly from the internet. If she needs an 
integrated Gantt chart for a larger project, she will find node types 
that provide that, as well as nodes, that are very basic or ones so 
specific that they are shared only among the pupils in one class (think 
of a "herbarium" node on an educational computer for school kids).

At this zoom level Maria can also choose what kind of a task "modal 
logic" is. This most closely corresponds to what current computer users 
do, when they navigate through a "start menu" and select the 
application that they see most fit to complete a specific task. Maria's 
selection at this level determines how the next zoom level will look 
like.

Maria chooses "Research project (department of Mathematics)" as type for 
the "modal logic" task, so when she zooms in yet again, she finds a 
workspace perfectly suited to her research project. The type "Research 
project (department of Mathematics)" is provided by her department at 
the university. Other types can again be downloaded from the internet 
and of course be created by users themselves, too. A generic "research 
project" might perhaps start a note taking application and a web 
browser showing results for a search for "modal logic", but the full 
power of Plasma was harnessed when Maria's department created a special 
project type.

At this third zoom level Maria has a note taking application at her 
disposal. For her text research she uses a generic template, but if she 
worked at a chemistry lab, for example, her department could have 
included special templates for her note taking application to jot down 
chemical formulas. Maria has also an applet on her desktop that plugs 
directly into her universities library. It uses Maria's address book to 
get the link to one of her identity providers, in this case: her 
university; this way Maria is authenticated for many online services 
her university offers, one of them being the library. Maria can search 
for books and even order them directly from this little applet, without 
having to start a web browser.

Another applet lets Maria collect bookmarks. If she also uses digital 
resources for her research, she can collect those in a little tray, 
that can bee seen as a bookmark manager. It is already preloaded with 
links to her departments homepage or regulations for what is expected 
from her for a presentation. In short everything digital, that is 
related to the task at hand, is part of Maria's workspace. In honour of 
the many brave Plasma developers Maria also has an abundance of clocks 
on her desktop.

At the end of the day Maria still thinks that geeks are kind of funny, 
but she's glad that they finally start to create usable software.

----8<----------------

michael