Contents:

• Introduction
• 1 Background
• 1.1 What is the typical user we are targeting
• 2 Possible Solutions
• 2.1 Microsoft Journal on the Tablet PC
• 2.2 Wiki, Bloggs, and xml.
• 3 Open Office: a front end for xml
• 3.1 Introduction
• 3.2 Inside the .sxi file
• 3.3 Applying an xslt stylesheet
• 4 Soup: A solution for hierarchical structure filing systems
• 4.1 Introduction
• 4.2 Soup
• 4.3 Using existing network
• 4.4 Integration with the Operating System
• 4.5 Graphical communication
• 4.6 Integration with the network, the Internet, and CDROMS
• 5 Conclusion
• 5.1 Time and approach
• 5.2 Complete or semi solutions
• 5.3 Personal gain
• 5.4 Future development
• Appendix 1 Bibliography
• Books
• Online Publications

Introduction

There seems to be a growing problem in colleges, schools, and companies to collect and archive work. This problem is particularly common in the design field, were the final solution is a fraction of the work done is solving the problem.

The other problem is the widening gap between work performed on computers, and the work done on more traditional media, such as paper. It is often that computer material is deleted except for some final files, and that the hand written / drawn remain scattered in various books or drawers that will soon be thrown away.

Brief

The brief is to find a solution to the following problem: A system is needed that enables users to carry out the steps from problem to solution (the design process) and for this process to be recorded and then elements can be taken and used for presentation purposes. All done without hindering the design process for the user. Things to consider is paper as well as computer work, different ways of working from person to person, and cost.

1 Background

1.1 What is the typical user we are targeting

In order to begin this project, it was essential to know who we where designing for. We could then focus on what goals that person intends to accomplish, and design something that lets them accomplish these goals as easily as possible.

Our typical user would be a design student doing concept based work. A lot of work would be done on paper before moving to the computer, but once on that computer stage, the pen and paper would rarely be used again in the project. The student appreciates the texture and physical reality of paper and the speed at which ideas can be recorded is crucial to the students way of working. However, the development work made on the computer is often not recorded as older versions are overwritten with the most recent copy.

The primary goal is to be able to compile a project together for presentation, and then archiving. Current methods of organising digital data do not fit the students working methods, so often everything is stored on the desktop, making a project difficult to compile.

Other goals include backing up projects, recording progress and development during projects, and presenting a project on the fly.

2 Possible Solutions

2.1 Microsoft Journal on the Tablet PC

“Windows Journal turns your Tablet PC into a digital writing pad that blends in easily enough to bring to meetings and is portable enough to let you take notes while standing or with the computer resting in your lap.

There's no need to take notes on paper and then enter them into your computer at a later time. Windows Journal lets you enter information directly into your computer wherever you are and then use that information immediately.

Windows Journal allows you to take digital notes in your own handwriting and store and manipulate them. You can also convert your handwriting to typed text for use in Windows Journal notes or other applications.

You can easily search through your Windows Journal notes for keywords, and create and save drawings or graphics”

Quote taken from the Microsoft promotional website for its Tablet edition of Windows XP. Can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/evaluation/overviews/pctools.mspx

The first thing was to explore the possibility of electronic sketchbooks. The idea being that if we recorded everything digitally, including our drawings, notes, etc., then we could merge the divide between sketchbook work and computer work that currently exists. It would then be a case of finding a suitable way of organising all this data.

The most obvious solution for the digital sketchbook was the Tablet PC. It was fairly light and compact, and to write on the screen felt as comfortable as writing on paper.

The biggest drawbacks of the Tablet PC were mainly two things:

1. Cost. A tablet PC ranges from around £1100 to £1600¹.
   This is far to expensive for every design student to own one during their period in college. Not only the cost of buying the units themselves, but the extra software licenses and extra resources to maintain them would be a big drain on the college finances².
2. The software. The program that comes with XP Tablet Edition, Microsoft Journal had some fundamental flaws. Although the sketchbook could be done digitally, It lacked all the usual benefits doing digitally should have offered. Their was no real way of filtering or extracting information, and work could not be exported to a standard common format, such as html.

2.2 Wiki Wiki Web, Weblogs, and XML.

There are already numerous solutions for making notes on the web. Wiki Wiki Web for example was developed as a way of creating HTML as quickly as possible³. it directly removes the need for writing html in a html editor, then uploading it via FTP, and trying to use forms as a way to gain feedback from visitors. Once a Wiki has been implemented, all you need to do is click on an edit button at the bottom of a page and you can edit the pages contents, but not in HTML, but in plain easy to read text⁴.

Weblogs are used for logging things on the Internet, such as diary's and conversations. The key advantages of Weblogs , is the use of XML in storing the information. This means that you can use a Weblog to record a project, and then extract the information from the XML and display it in a completely different format. The power of XML also means that you can filter data by any number of ways, defined by the user.

The only problem with these solutions are that they are primarily for text on the Internet. There are no facilities for being able to draw diagrams, and access to the Internet is always required. Not a feasible solution for designers who wake up at 0300 in the morning and need to draw out an idea.

3 Open Office: a front end for XML

3.1 Introduction

OpenOffice by sun is a open source multi-platform office productivity suite which is compatible with all major file formats.

“To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.”

OpenOffice Mission Statement

Impress, the OpenOffice equivalent of Microsoft power point, can support text, images, drawing, video and sound. It also has a very easy method of rearranging slides, and adding notes that do not appear in the presentation.

But the biggest advantage of OpenOffice is that it saves your files in XML. This has a big advantage over Microsoft Journal on the tablet PC, since we can now extract the information from the sketchbook and display it anyway we like.

3.2 Inside the .sxi file

Illustration 1: Screenshot of the extracted .sxi file shown in Konqueror.

In its current state Impress is just like Microsoft power point, but with its own native format. But the native format (.sxi) is just a zipped up folder containing XML files, and a folder with any images from the document.

3.3 Applying an XML stylesheet

Once we have extracted the XML from the document we can then do what we like with the data. All reference to images point to the images stored in the pictures folder, and any drawing we did inside of OpenOffice are stored in SVG. By writing a XSLT document, and modifying the content.xml header to reference the XSLT file, we could extract the data and display it in any way we liked.

Illustration 2: Diagram on the use of OpenOffice as a front end for XML, to be used as a digital sketchbook.

However a few major issues OpenOffice is still not a suitable solution, for the following reasons:

• OpenOffice still not available as a native apple OSX application. (X11/WIN32 only)
• No support for on-line editing. Must have a copy of OpenOffice and upload the edited XML file for every edit.
• No real support for sketching or managing scanned pages from a sketchbook
• Cannot assign special attributes to information within the program.

4 Soup: A solution for hierarchical structure filing systems

4.1 Introduction

It was clear from the many attempts of using a electronic or digital sketchbook, that this was not the direction to take. Cost was one factor, but more fundamental than that was the difference in availability of paper compared to computers. Although the number of computers around us has increased dramatically in the past twenty years, the amount we use paper has not changed⁵. This led to the conclusion that in our current society use of electronic sketchbooks would remain to a few technology enthusiasts, not to the common person more likely to have a notepad lying around, than access to a computer terminal.

The decision was made to concentrate on the filing system, and how this effects the way students organise their work, with a view at looking at assigning attributes to content. The problem with current filing systems is that they only support a hierarchical structure for organising data. This limited way of organising things did not suite the need of design students, because content could often be classed into several categories, resulting in files being lost in a deep hierarchy.

4.2 Soup

To resolve this problem with hierarchical filing systems, a soup based system would be used. Soup is a filing system where all files are together on the same level, and instead of folders, files can be arranged and sorted by attributes. This gives the distinct advantage of being able to group things using any attribute we like, and also that things can belong to as many groups as desired.

To implement this in a college environment, where all computers are using the traditional hierarchical structure, a new application would have to be running on each machine. This application would be responsible for assigning attributes to a folder of files, displaying these files in relation to those attributes, and do this while being fully integrated into the operating system.

4.3 Using existing network

It was noticed that the current college network had facilities for hosting student projects around the college, to laptops or computers at home, and to the Internet. It therefore made sense to utilise these existing facilities in any solution that was to be proposed. However it was crucial that the system could work even if taken away from the network, for example if transferred to a computer without access to the college network, or burnt to a CDROM.

This meant that the application had to be running on the local machine, but would use an open format so it could be used even without the application. It was decided that XML was the obvious format for storing information, but that to parse the XML using a style sheet was not a good idea because support for parsing an XML stylesheet locally was not widely available, and parsing it server side would limit everything to a network. This meant that HTML, a widely supported and light format, would also have to be generated by the application. CSS could be rewritten by users if a custom look for the HTML was required.

Illustration 3: Diagram showing how the soup application would operate under a network environment

4.4 Integration with the Operating System

The application would run on all major operating systems, namely Microsoft Windows, Apples OSX, Linux, BSD, Solaris, BeOS, etc. In most circumstances the application would run as a background task, running seamlessly with the operating systems GUI. It would not be an application that the user would have to manually start in order to manage project, but would rather use many of the existing operating systems graphical symbols⁶, for viewing, organising, and managing projects. in many circumstances it could be considered an extra feature to the operating system, rather than an independent application.

4.5 Graphical communication

Although the application makes every attempt to use the operating systems existing graphic symbols, due to the different approach the solution has to files and how they are arranged, some key things had to be designed graphically different to the standard the operating system dictates.

One of the key elements that undertook a graphical change was the user defined categories, changed in later development to filters. This was because having resemblance to standard folders, categories were becoming confused as being real folders. But they did not behave like folders, and were fundamentally different, in that files could be in simultaneous categories, but never moved from being in the root of the project folder. The change of language from categories to filters helped to gain an understanding of their real purpose and workings, while changing their graphical representation to colour filters prevented them from being confused with standard folders.

Another graphical component that underwent change was the project folders themselves, and their relationship to other project folders. This was because although files could be dragged into them like normal folder, their treatment of other folders or project folders was completely different from that of standard folders.

4.6 Integration with the network, the Internet, and CDROMS

Although this area has been touched on earlier in this chapter, under “Using existing network”, it is worth mentioning here in more detail how the application would work in different conditions in more detail.

As already discussed the application would run locally on any machine working on the project. This avoids any problems arising when the network is unavailable for any reason. The proposal is that the application be installed on all college computers, and that students and staff are given copies for their computers at home or for laptops. This creates the following scenario:

Students begin working on a project either on their laptops or using a college computer. For students divided between working at home and using college computers, they have several options for keeping their projects organised.

• They keep all their projects on the college server, and access this folder from home via an Internet connection.
• They use removable media, such as zip disks, and use the synchronisation facility available on nearly all operating systems to make sure that the contents of the disk are the same as that of the project folder on the network
• In instances where it is not viable to use the above method, for example video content with large file size, they use the project folder on the network as the main place of storage, and take home only those files they need to work on at home. On return to the college they can then add/upgrade any new files to the main project folder. In the unfortunate circumstance that they require a file at home which they have not brought, they can view the project contents via a web browser from home.
• Laptop users would be connected to their folder on the network while in college, which could be synchronised to a folder on their local machine.

Because students would keep their work on the college server up to date, at any time sessional staff, other students and a course leader can keep up with the students progress by viewing the project over the Internet through a browser. In situations where network privileges allow, course leaders would be able to add key documents⁷ for students to organise appropriately directly to their project folder on the network.

At the end of the project, each students project folder could be available in a number of ways. Provided their was sufficient space, projects could be kept on the network for it to be viewed over the Internet. Alternatively, the entire project could be burnt to a CDROM, and handed to the course leader. The course leader would be able to view the project in exactly the same way as the students, since he also has the application installed. However in scenario where the CD needed to be viewed on a computer without the application, the contents of the CD could be viewed by using the HTML generated by the application.

5 Conclusion

5.1 Time and approach

The entire length of the project was much longer than expected. This was probably due to the wrong approach at the beginning of the project. Due to availability experimenting with the tablet PC began at the beginning of the project, resulting in the project taking the electronic sketchbook route before all other possible directions had been considered. This narrow approach at the beginning hindered the project later on, when it was realised that paper was too essential a medium to replace in current time.

A better approach would have been what is called the “telescope- microscope” approach. This involves looking at the topic at a very general level, with as wide scope as possible. This results in a clear weakness emerging which can then be approached in a very thorough manner. As a result of narrowing the area of investigation at the beginning of this project finding the key weakness happened much later in the project, reducing time spent on looking at the interface in minute detail.

5.2 Complete or semi solutions

One of the major findings was that hierarchical structure filing systems were no longer sufficient for many of the tasks computers are now used for. There is a growing realisation to this in the computer community, which has resulted in new projects⁸ emerging attempting to solve this issue. BeFS is an example of a relational database filing system that tries to tackle the problem at the root of computing.

In this project however, it was too ambitious to approach it at such a large scale. The disadvantages of this is that should relational database file systems take off and become part of everyday computing, the projects outcome becomes redundant. But no major developments look likely to emerge soon, even the Longhorn project has resorted to running on top of the currently used filing system NFTS. This just confirms that attempting to change key areas first, and gaining some experience before attempting to change the current state of computing is probably a more sensible way of progressing.

5.3 Personal gain

Despite a better approach could have been taken at the beginning of the project, the final outcome turned out to be a solution to the right problem. The experience from making this mistake will now influence future projects, preventing even the availability of resources influencing the direction a project takes.

5.4 Future development

Areas for future work would include exploring different ways of students collecting sketchbook work into a digital format, and examining what the benefits of this could be. Because it was concluded that paper would still be the medium for sketchbooks, this solution took for granted availability of network scanners or digital cameras as a way of submitting this paper based work to the system. This is however a completely different project, and was not such a problem as the hierarchical filing system posed to design students.

The area of collaborative working and working environments was never explored in this projects solution, as it became a new project altogether. This was never intended, and was a result of a very large topic with many possibilities. It is also worth noting that little consideration was made to ways of working in the context other than that of design in a college environment. But despite this, much of the findings and solutions apply to both education and industry based around design. It is imagined that not all design professionals would be likely to publish unfinished work, and would have tighter recording standards, but the needs of the designer and their bosses would be very much the same as those found of design students and lecturers.

Appendix 1 Bibliography

Books

Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21^st Century” by Simson Garfinkel.

"Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, risk and digital discrimination" edited by David Lyon

Online Publications

http://www.tabletpctalk.com/
http://images.tabletpctalk.com/amazonstore/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3283535.stm
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/tabletpc/evaluation/overviews/pctools.mspx
http://www.zzoss.com/projects/oowdbk/docbook/html-all.html
http://www.mulberrytech.com/walkthewalk.html
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/02/04/tr-xml.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system
http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/
http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/03/09/05/1241235.shtml?tid=131

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