[kepler-dev] Kepler actor icons
Laura L. Downey
ldowney at lternet.edu
Wed Jul 13 11:15:09 PDT 2005
Thanks for the clarification on the actor being fired versus iteration - I
wasn't positive I had understood your meaning correctly the first time. ;-)
Yes I agree with your concern Dan. It is going to take a certain level of
expertise and knowledge to create workflows from scratch than it is to use
them or modify them. We are definitely talking about different user groups
as Bertram and others have mentioned before. I don't know if it is possible
to abstract to a level in all cases where someone won't have to have some
computer science or programming knowledge. I've been envisioning that in
some cases with really complex models a domain scientist will conceptually
know what they want to do but will have to work with an IT person to get
things implemented unless they are that "rare" hybrid user of both domain
scientist and competent programmer. We definitely have some challenges
ahead. But hey it would be boring otherwise.. ;-)
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 11:56 AM
To: Laura L. Downey
Cc: 'Kepler-Dev'; Mark Schildhauer
Subject: Re: Kepler actor icons
Laura (and other Kepler developers/users),
One slight clarification - the numbers in the icons in the examples are
the number of times an actor is to be fired, not the iteration number, but
including both some parameters of this sort and the iteration number while
running would be good as you mentioned.
As far as 'for some users the notion of "adding tokens" will have no
meaning' - Good point; I was the mistake of using a technical term that most
user wouldn;t initially recognize. [A 'token' is just a block of data passed
between actors.] But this does bring up a point that has been bothering me
for awhile. It looks to me like an understanding of some computer science
concepts are essential to creating new workflows in Kepler and deciding
which Computational models (Directors) to use. ['Token' is an example,
although we don't have to call it a 'token'.] This notion has been enhanced
by recent work in trying to create loops and iterations and some discussions
on kepler-dev. I guess I am just expressing a concern that we have a LOT of
work to do in trying to make Kepler useful to someone wtihout requiring a
considerable start up effort.
Dan
-----
Laura L. Downey wrote:
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
*******************************************************************
--
*******************************************************************
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/20050713/25acf22b/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/20050713/25acf22b/attachment-0001.jpg
More information about the Kepler-dev
mailing list