[kepler-dev] New Kepler Menus

Laura L. Downey ldowney at lternet.edu
Wed Feb 1 08:53:55 PST 2006


Oh good points Matthew.  But I sort of envisioned that setting (delay time)
being a preference setting somewhere that can be easily adjusted.  And of
course a click will turn off the highlighting.  I was also wondering if
there was some way the system could calculate the delay time for the user so
that things are visible to the eye.  I would suspect that in the case of
long running workflows, users would choose to turn off the highlighting
since they aren't really going to sit in front of the computer and watch
something for days -- then again if the workflow is long running, they might
want to glance at it every so often to see where it is in the workflow etc.

And of course this points to some of the other features I would really like
to get included in the future and that is giving users an estimate of how
long a workflow will take to run before starting the run, and also to
provide some type of progress back to the user for the estimated remaining
time to complete the workflow.  And then that also reminded me that I
wondered if we want to offer workflow running in the "background" too with
some way to periodically check progress.  Uh oh, I had better stop thinking
of all these new features. ;-)

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 office
505.610.9657 mobile
505.277-2541 fax
ldowney at lternet.edu
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Brooke [mailto:brooke at nceas.ucsb.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 9:41 AM
To: Laura L. Downey
Cc: 'Dan Higgins'; 'Kepler-Dev'
Subject: Re: New Kepler Menus


Laura L. Downey wrote:
 > I'm proposing to make that the default
 > (checked) option so that running with feedback is the default.

There is a potential drawback to enabling the feedback by default: the 
"Run with feedback" option has a user-editable "delay time", needed to 
make the animation visible, or at least slow enough to follow by eye.

Therefore, we would have to create a default value for the delay, which 
would, in turn, slow down the execution of all workflows. Probably not 
an issue with some of the simpler example WFs, but may be a problem with 
bigger/more intensive WFs, especially if users don't realize this is the 
case.

m



Laura L. Downey wrote:
> Matthew has already commented on the toggling issue so there is a way to
> turn on/off the highlighting during workflow execution.
> 
> In terms of the phraseology, I kept "Run" in the "Run with Feedback" item
to
> keep all the "run" items associated.  We have Run and Run Window and users
> in some of the early testing really liked the "animation" where they could
> see which actor was executing so I'm proposing to make that the default
> (checked) option so that running with feedback is the default.  Because I
> wanted to keep the "Run" association, I suggested Run with Feedback
because
> Run with Animation just didn't sound right to me.
> 
> We can certainly adjust the phraseology if it proves to be problematic.
> Although I suspect that if someone turns it off and sees they don't get
the
> highlighting during execution they will easily understand what Run with
> Feedback means.  The use of the term feedback may be a bit human factors
> centric on my part since that is so often used in my field to mean
> communicating with the user -- giving them appropriate visual and textual
> feedback etc. And of course feedback does mean different things in
different
> contexts, just as Edward pointed out from his perspective.  But feedback
is
> also a very general term that just means give me some indication on what
is
> happening.
> 
> 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 office
> 505.610.9657 mobile
> 505.277-2541 fax
> ldowney at lternet.edu
>  
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew Brooke [mailto:brooke at nceas.ucsb.edu] 
> Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 8:43 PM
> To: Dan Higgins
> Cc: Laura L. Downey; Kepler-Dev
> Subject: Re: New Kepler Menus
> 
> 
> Dan -
> 
> thanks - i know about that one. Laura's redesign has a checkbox menu 
> item - click once for on; click again to toggle off - but i have not yet 
> had chance to implement it like that.
> 
> m
> 
> 
> 
> Dan Higgins wrote:
>> Hi Matthew (and Laura)
>>
>>    In using the new Kepler menu system, I can across a problem. In the 
>> old menus (aka Ptolemy menu) there is a menu item named 'Animate 
>> Execution' under the 'Debug' menu. Immediately below the 'Animate 
>> Execution' is a 'Stop Animating' meny item.
>>
>>    'Animate Execution' shows when actors are executing when a workflow 
>> runs by 'hilighting' the actor for a use-set period of time (for some 
>> Directors). 'Stop Animating' turns off the animation
>>
>>    In the new menus, this item has apparently been replaced by the menu 
>> item 'Run with Feedback' under the 'Tools' menu. The problem is that 
>> there is no 'Stop Feedback' menu item. So once the user starts showing 
>> which icon is firing, there is no way to turn off the effect with the 
>> new menus!  Rather that having a seperate 'Stop' menu, perhaps the menu 
>> should toggle from 'Run with Feedback' to 'Stop Feedback' and back?
>>
>>    Incidently. in my opinion, the original menu text of 'Animate 
>> Execution' seems more descriptive than 'Run with Feedback'. Feedback 
>> seems like a term that can have many meanings and is not very helpful to 
>> a new Kepler user.. 'Feedback' could just be some text summary at the 
>> end of workflow execution.
>>
>> Dan
>>
> 

-- 

---------------------------------------------
Matthew Brooke, Ph.D.
Marine Sciences Research Building, Room #3407
University of California
Santa Barbara, CA  93106-6150
ph: (805) 893-7108   fx: 805-893-8062
brooke at nceas.ucsb.edu
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