[kepler-dev] Kepler actor icons

[Laura L. Downey]

Thanks Dan.  Interesting comments.  I hadn't seen these icons before and
they have some of the same characteristics I've been proposing - simple
representatations (e.g., sequence to array and array to sequence).  I
support the idea of adding the number somewhere if we are talking about a
repeating process within an actor.  That would be good feedback to the user
when executing the workflow.  Right now the plan is to highlight an actor as
it is executing and we could add the number somewhere on the actor if we
have a repeating process happening within that actor and the user could see
the "counting up or down" happening etc.

 

Just a comment though, for some users the notion of "adding tokens" will
have no meaning.  That is a computer science perspective not necessarily an
ecologist or biologist perspective.  However, the simple act of just having
numbers iterate over a repeating process will let a user know that things
are happening and that is good feedback as I mentioned before.

 

As to a parameter being embedded within an actor, my comment there is that
we would somehow need to communicate that it is a parameter (and not an
iteration of a repeating process).  We could maybe do this by parameters
always being in the bottom left hand corner and iterations being in the
bottom right hand corner etc.  Of course this only deals with the notion of
one parameter - if an actor has more than one parameter, say 5 or so then
that would be a problem displaying all the parameters on an actor because we
would run out of room.

 

p.s. I'll be publishing the final proposed visual re-design most likely
within the next month or so incorporating feedback from our last meeting.
Basically I'm going to go with the set we have (about 25 of so) with the
option that people can add their own icons using the proposed color (teal
and white) of the actors.

 

Laura L. Downey
Senior Usability Engineer
LTER Network Office
Department of Biology, MSC03 2020
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM  87131-0001
505.277.3157 phone

505.277-2541 fax
ldowney at lternet.edu

 

  _____  

From: Dan Higgins [mailto:higgins at nceas.ucsb.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 11:05 AM
To: Laura L. Downey; Kepler-Dev
Subject: Kepler actor icons

 

Laura,

    In out continuing discussion of Kepler actor icons, take a look at the
workflow below (from an example from Edward Lee about how to handle nested
loops). This is an example of some more interesing icons that are already in
PTII and Keper (rather than the default blue triangle). In particular, the
SequenceToArray actually shows the process of putting tokens into an array
and the ArrayToSequence the inverse. More interestingly, the number '5' on
the icons is a parameter of the actor and it is 'dynamic', i.e. it changes
as the parameter is changed, avoiding the need to open the actor! (This also
occurs for the Repeat actor, which has an icon that depicts its function and
shows a dynamic parameter.)

Dan






-- 
*******************************************************************
Dan Higgins                                  higgins at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Ph: 805-893-5127
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) 
Marine Science Building - Room 3405
Santa Barbara, CA 93195
*******************************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/pipermail/kepler-dev/attachments/20050713/d54c2d1c/attachment-0001.htm
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 26043 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mercury.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/pipermail/kepler-dev/attachments/20050713/d54c2d1c/attachment-0001.jpg