Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 22:49:32 -0700
From: "Virginia McArthur"
Subject: RE: Memex Jam Documentation

First off, Thank-you for letting me participate, it was a great exercise and I really enjoyed thinking about a very practical application for the room. I was not completely satisfied with my prototype; however, it is headed in the right direction.

 

I was also seeing some overlap in needs and ideas amongst the group as I left Tuesday. My attempt at collating multiple notes and reminders into one central location, organized and parsed into meaningful pages could work with E-Mail, notes from meetings, notes from research, and of course to-do lists and tasks. I was thinking of other ways to solve my issue with many physical papers and notes and how to tie them back into one central location accessible digitally and physically.

 

All in a Day’s Work:

 

I first pulled together all of the inputs that I use to quickly jot down notes, ideas, and tasks:

These are both on physical paper and digital media:

 

 

I then looked at similar themes for the notes, tasks, and media used to track all of my work throughout the day.

 

What I found is that I would write notes for myself but also for the group and wanted to find a way to get

These tasks and reminders out to the team quickly from my notebook or calendar to be shared across the group.

 

I find that I will take time at the end of each day in the lab and go through all of my media, notebook, sickies, calendar, and digital notepad and then physically collate into one digital file that I will reference each day and then add to or remove items as they have been completed or moved to another source.

I realized as I was working on a scheme for a tracking device to be able to collate items, that something really simple like using color coded tabs and shapes could identify how each item should be stored and grouped. I imagine being able to place all items on my desk at the end of the day and making sure each has been coded, and if coded they would organize onto separate note lists:

·        To-dos

·        Notes

·        Reminders

·        Group meetings

·        Individual Meetings

 

If I had more time, I would think through how to get the to-do items to organize throughout the week and automatically update calendars for myself and the group.

First step, organize my own thoughts and notes daily. Next Jam – how to distribute back into the calendar.

 

 

The color coded reference pages above should be stored digitally, projected back onto my work table, and also printable to take with me when I leave the room.

I would also like to be able to physically check off items and then once the paper returns to the table, it would be recorded that this items was complete and update the tracking list.

 

Some interesting riffs:

Josh: Though about being able to mark locations in the room as reminders to go back to those places and perform a task. For example: Having a physical Phone in the room, and you could leave notes on the phone on who you need to call and then that reminder would show up on the call-back or message paper at my desk. We could also have trackers in the kitchen for trash and the dishwasher, reminding us that they need to be dealt with. If there is a tag that is readable in the room, it would collate that reminder into the daily to-do either for the group or individual based on the marker at the task and object.

 

VA: When I left on Tuesday, I thought about how we would like to be able to leave notes in general throughout the room and it would be great if we could tag, write notes throughout the room and the room could record the note and collate them and send to the individual who the note is for. For example: We leave notes on the stand-up calendar and white board. Those notes could be recorded and sent to who they are directed to – for Bret or even for the group to ponder before they come in on Friday.

 

When I talked with my friend Emily last night about the Jam and what I in particular was trying to solve, she asked me to review the recent partnership with MOLESKINE and 53 Paper. www.fiftythree.com . They are keeping the notes on the app, trapped behind the screen, but the idea of annotating quickly on captured images is there and you can see that people want this technology, they just are not thinking that they can escape the screen and annotate directly on the original image and have it in both places.

 

Looking forward to the next Jam,

VA

 

From: Chaim Gingold [mailto:****************]
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2016 4:58 PM
To: Joshua Horowitz <****************>
Cc: Glen Chiacchieri <****************>; Toby Schachman <****************>; Bret Victor <****************>; Dynamic Medium <****************>
Subject: Re: Memex Jam Documentation

 

Here are the thumbnails from my mockup:

 

 

Plus a link to the originals (not a stable Dropbox link!):

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/nsovjzb3umtfwji/AADUmzvCoewW4tNOyoQxuZXaa?dl=0

 

 

On Mar 23, 2016, at 4:47 PM, Joshua Horowitz wrote:

 

Quick report!

 

I find that writing & sketching in a big space hugely helps me organize my thoughts and think through a topic. Sometimes I use poster-sized paper or whiteboards for this. But I've been discouraged by the way that these sheets of paper become scattered and hard to manage. I don't trust that I'll be able to easily bring back old sketches and build off of previous thoughts. (Also, whiteboards have to be erased from time to time, which sucks.)

 

Just for context, here's an example of the kind of sketches I'm talking about:

 

<2016-03-22 15.09.18.jpg>

 

I decided to use my Memex Jam time thinking through this problem. Progress was slow. At first, I was just stuck. So I took out a big sheet of paper to help myself think:

 

<2016-03-22 17.56.12.jpg>

 

That helped a lot! I imagined all my sketches living in a single, flexibly organized 2D space, with just enough structure imposed to overcome the limitations of real space. For instance: a box containing notes on a single topic could resize to fit new thoughts, automatically pushing other boxes to make room. And boxes could be tagged with (or detect) their topic and editing/viewing dates, so connections and trails could be traced through the landscape.

 

<2016-03-22 17.56.33.jpg>

 

However, I still didn't get to any actual prototyping. I think part of the trouble was that the vision forming in my head was based around screen-based techniques which were harder to prototype AND uncomfortably dissonant with the vision we've been discussing for Reality Kit.

 

I got a bit of feedback from Toby which I now choose to interpret as pushing me toward divergent approaches to the problem, which might better take advantage of our Reality-Kit sensibilities. At the time, I was still attached to my slippy-map/box concept. But I think I would like to revisit this domain sometime, with a more open mind and some construction paper. :)

 

(Thanks everyone for another energetic jam!)

 

 

On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 3:42 PM, Glen Chiacchieri wrote:

(Bret mentioned that it might be a good idea to wait for everyone to do their documentation before we have a meeting trying to name some of the common features of the prototypes. We'll be able to use that documentation as references.  We'll have that meeting sometime after that happens, hopefully this week while it's fresh in our minds.)

 

On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Toby Schachman wrote:

I prototyped around my process of researching and presenting on computer sensing last week.

 

I divided the workflow into three stages: collecting, organizing, and presenting.

 

<image.png>

 

Though as we'll see these blend into each other and form a cycle.

 

Collecting

 

In collecting, I want to be able to quickly follow references I find in papers. Here is an augmented reading desk that lets you follow these links while reading a paper (on paper). By pointing at a link you see a projected preview of the linked-to paper:

 

<image.png>

 

If it looked interesting I could say "print" to get a hardcopy of the entire paper.

 

I think this preview format works pretty well for academic papers: seeing the title, authors, abstract, and all the pictures.

 

Glen suggested lowering the activation energy to follow references even further. When you have a paper on the table, all the referenced previews could be shown surrounding it. Or perhaps all the references from the page you're on. The idea is to make it easier to follow references (right now it is hard!) and promote serendipitous discoveries.

 

Organizing

 

I want to be able to clip out pictures and passages of text and rearrange (collage) them. To do this I highlight regions of the papers and passages and I say "print".

 

<2016-03-22 18.01.19.jpg>

 

<2016-03-22 18.01.30.jpg>

 

<2016-03-22 18.01.38.jpg>

 

These clippings get printed out and I arrange the clippings on the table, along with some of my own notes:

 

<2016-03-22 18.01.58.jpg>

 

When I'm satisfied, I have the system print a copy of my arrangement:

 

<2016-03-22 18.05.32.jpg>

 

I then collage this collage onto a bigger collage on my whiteboard:

 

<2016-03-22 18.06.14.jpg>

 

More Collecting

 

I also collect material from around the lab. I point at a label on the research gallery and tell them system to print the email thread.

 

<2016-03-22 18.07.09.jpg>

 

<2016-03-22 18.06.27.jpg>

 

I "clip out" sections of this email with my highlighter:

 

<2016-03-22 18.06.37.jpg>

 

<2016-03-22 18.06.45.jpg>

 

And arrange these into a collage for my whiteboard:

 

<2016-03-22 18.08.47.jpg>

 

Presenting

 

Finally, since all of my media always points back to its original source, I can point at media on my whiteboard and enlarge it on the big screen for showing to the group:

 

<2016-03-23 13.39.01.jpg>

 

This can show still images, videos (as in the video RFID demo), or also load up "snapshots" of live systems. For example, Bret could point at his "dynamic screenshots" from eToys, HyperCard, etc. and load those interactive examples up on the big screen for group discussion.

 

Further, here is where the stages mix: while presenting, the group might want to follow a picture back to the original paper, might want to follow links within that paper, etc. Presenting becomes collecting.

 

The presentation itself could be recorded and linearized into a document (like this email), with spoken transcript interspersed with the media that was called up. Presenting becomes organizing.

 

Thoughts

 

I made a list of "actions" that I think you'd need to be able to perform on any given "reference" in the system:

 

- Print

- Find source (of a clipping)

- Follow links

- Display (on surface X)

- Annotate

- Make link

- Highlight (distinguish a region/clipping)

 

Other riffs from the group:

 

- The highlighter colors could function as a form of tagging, as people tend to do. "Show me all highlights done with this pen."

- When you follow a clipping back to the source, the projection mapping could show the rest of the paper "around" the clipping, putting the clipping back in its original context.