Web Development Methods Unit 10: Future Web Applications.

Web Development Methods

Unit 10: Future Web Applications

Today

Contributes to Learning Outcomes: 1. Describe the evolution of the world wide web 2. Identify current and future application areas

for the world wide web.

We will cover: Semantic web Online communities/sociability New platforms/contexts Tips for Tracking trends

Why Future Trends Matter

First - v. hard (impossible?) to predict

But: Companies work typically 2-5 years

ahead As employees you need to keep skills

relevant Web is a v. fast moving environment

Identifying Future Trends

Can come from many sources: Technologist driven (e.g. Semantic Web) User driven (e.g. online communities) Context driven (e.g. using technology at home,

whilst mobile) Technology driven (e.g. new platforms, WAP,

DiTV, etc)Research centres (e.g. MIT, Philips Labs,

BT Labs, etc) often lead the way: ‘Blue sky research’

The Semantic Web

The web problem: Finding what you want

Tim Berners-Lee’s solution: The semantic web

The basic idea: Make the information more ‘machine

understandable’

The Dream

Machines that talk, and think/reason, like humans: HAL in 2001 Any number of robots/cyborgs etc in

films and books The Star Trek computer

The Problem

Computers are stupid: GIGO (Garbage In, garbage Out) They depend entirely on us giving them

data in formats they can understand The underlying meaning or sense of

data is called ‘semantics’ Humans use logic, inference, fuzzy

thinking etc to make sense:Semantics can vary with context

Semantics - Example

“In Edinburgh yesterday it was sunny.”Humans make sense of this sentence by:

inferring what its constituent parts mean and how they relate to each other

Machines can’t - they need this spelled out for them: In <city> <day relative to today’s date>

it was <weather: amount of sunshine> with <weather: type of wind>

TBL’s Vision

The web is structured so that: the underlying semantics of all its data is clear which would allow machines to use logic to

analyse dataCurrently:

Find all web pages with the phrase ‘cars for sale’ and Edinburgh

Future Find all web pages that advertise cars for sale in

the Edinburgh area in the price range £2000-£4000

Achieving the Semantic Web

A new kind of approach to marking up web pages HTML just marks up page layout Need to mark up semantics as well

TBL’s proposal: RDF (Rich Description Framework) Extends the principle of metadata

Metadata

In the previous example <city> etc. are examples of metadata: Information about information Edinburgh = information <city> = metadata Tells a computer that ‘Edinburgh is a city’ Would not know this otherwise

You have already used metadata: ‘meta tags’ e.g. <title> etc in the <head>

section of an GHTML page

But...

Means we all need to agree about meaningsExamples:

What is a <city> ? Is today 14/5/01 or 14th May 2001 or 5/14/01?

TBL thinks we ‘understand’ by ‘associating’ things as if programming our brains Many philosophers would disagree!

Politics: Who controls the meanings?

WHAT IS AN ONLINE COMMUNITY?

Preece (2000): People Shared Purpose Policies Computer Systems

E-commerce sites increasingly try to promote ‘community’

Question: are all web sites ‘online communities’?

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

CHI96: shared goals and resources, repeated participation,

reciprocity, shared context Sociological:

geographical, strength and type of relationships Technology:

participation technology (Listserv or chatroom, synchronous or asynchronous, text or graphical etc)

VR: long term, immersive

E-commerce: broad view, promote ‘stickiness’

COMMUNITY

A process not a ‘thing’Have a historyCan be more or less:

planned regulated dynamic heterogeneous purposeful

CLASSIFYING ONLINE COMMUNITIES

Categorised by purpose: informational, communication/social

exchange, therapeutic, educational, entertainment, work

Categorised by people: professional, casual, customers, work

groupsCategorised by technology:

graphical/multimedia, text, immersive (VR), a/synchronous

CASE STUDY: BRAINIUM

http://www.brainium.comPurpose:

educational, informationalPeople:

professional (teachers), regular (kids), casual (parents)

Policies: privacy

Technology: asynchronous, multimedia

SOCIABILITY - PURPOSE

Shared goalsClarity of community’s purposePromoting empathy ‘v’ encouraging

lively interactions ‘v’ hostilityEvolution: purposes develop

BRAINIUM PURPOSE

Mixture shared goals: parents: support kids, stay one step ahead... teachers: educate, share teaching resources... kids: do what told, learn, have fun...

Clarity of purpose: high (parents, teachers), mixed (kids)

Promoting empathy: teachers bulletin board

SOCIABILITY - PEOPLE

Participation ‘types’: moderators/mediators professionals lurkers participants (stars, provocateurs,

socializers, explorers, etc)Community size:

bigger community = harder to represent

BRAINIUM - PEOPLE

Professionals - science experts, educators

Participants - teachers, parents, kids, limited scope to ‘star’, provoke, etc

‘Anonymous’ moderator (policy writers etc)

Lurkers - encouraged since only got email communication options

SOCIABILITY - POLICIES

‘Internal’: membership netiquette/netspeak bylaws and moderation rules

‘External’: privacy security copyright

Balancing: promoting ‘v’ stifling community development

BRAINIUM POLICIES

Membership types (educator, parents, kids, corporates)

Privacy Policy - available from home page

No netiquette/netspeak policies detailed

SOCIABILITY - TECHNOLOGY

Immersiveness: virtual environments, text worlds (MOOs),

avatars, etcInteraction devices/stylesMedia/modalitiesA/synchronousListservs/email, usenet, chat rooms,

CVEs/shared spaces, web sites, bulletin boards, groupware, media spaces

BRAINIUM TECHNOLOGY

MultimediaVery graphicalAsynchronousEmail Bulletin Board (but no bulletins…)

DESIGNING FOR SOCIABILITY

Requirements: sociability as focus (people, purpose, policies,

technology) still need other HCI issues (activities, users’

from cognitive/physical perspective, etc) design for community moderators as well as

participants ‘other’ issues: economic, collective

characteristics, community centered designBut as with the Semantic Web:

Who defines/controls the community?

COFFEE TIME

Back in 10 minutes please

KEY AREAS OF HOUSEHOLD TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

‘Smart Homes’: networked, devices that ‘talk’ to each other (e.g.

via wireless technology), monitoring systems, personal safety/health systems, central services control

‘Information Appliances’: devices that have informational capacities built-in

(Web enabled fridge, microwaves, games consoles, TVs etc)

‘Tangibles’: toddler beds that detect movement, picture frames

that respond to distant events

CASE STUDY 1: HOME INFORMATION CENTRE

Flex Project: EU funded 2 years long 5 partners (Napier, Bang and Olufsen, UPM, SAGE,

PDC) in 3 countries (UK, Denmark, Spain)

Interface just one of the issues: content, data mining, natural language systems,

speech Shares many of the concerns of the semantic web

FLEX GOALS

Main project goal

• Home Information Centre (HIC)

• Multimodal access to data and services

• Relevant for everyday lifein domestic situations

Contents

• A huge amount of information out there, but diffuse

• Need for easy, intuitive access• Well-ordered sources from

providers

Product goals

• FLEX technology

• Technological platform for HIC

• Evaluate synergy of:

• simple use

• intuitive navigation

• flexible search

HIC - User Context

Beolink (r)

prin-ter

PC isdn

M oving around INFO TAIN M ENT

Lean-backEN TERTAIN M ENT

Lean-forw ardPR O D UC TIV ITY

phoneradiotapeC D

TV

video

Internet

HIC Living room Hom e office

info

pen

HIC Prototype Design

HIC Prototype setup (seen with BeoLab 4000 speakers)

FLEX Interface Design

Scenario-based Design

• Developing scenarios that capture:

•people undertaking

•activities in an

•context using

•technologies

• Web-based FLEX Scenarios Corpus, standarised scenario layout

• Facilitates design decision making, partner communication

Developing Scenarios

• Gathering user experiences

• Brainstorming concrete situations

• Collect/compile into classes:

•info gathering

•communication

•entertainment

• Gather representative real data and media

• Specify rationale for scenario

Scenarios Through The Lifecycle

User User

StoriesStories

Use Use

CasesCases

ConcreteConcrete

ScenariosScenarios

Conceptual Conceptual

ScenariosScenarios

Gathering User Experiences

Households Study

• Ethnographic studies of information/communication in domestic settings

• Rural and urban households

• Challenges:

• negotiating access

• defining domestic setting, household, etc.

• lack of obvious tasks

• techniques

Design Workshops

• Varied user groups:

• rural / urban

• kids / adults

• techno-literate / non-literate

• Developing scenarios

• Brainstorming/mocking up design ideas

• Paper based prototyping

FLEX CHALLENGES

Development Methods: how do we understand users, activities,

contexts and technologies in the household use of scenarios and participatory design

workshops to bridge the gapThe Content Problem:

web content is still largely designed for ‘lean forward situations’

household contexts are more ‘lean back’ and/or ‘walking about’

DiTV

DiTV = Digital Interactive Television long hyped a reality with the arrival of digital broadcasting

DiTV approaches: enhanced interactive

DiTV genres (Dormann, 2000): information (e.g. weather) commerce (e.g. shopping, banking) fiction (still rare) play (games, game shows, magazines, chat, email)

DiTV TECHNOLOGY

Transmission: satellite (SKY Digital) cable terrestrial (OPEN)

‘Set-top box’: now being built in (e.g. Philips tv)

Interaction devices: currently restricted to wireless keyboards future: joysticks, voice, touch screen, force

feedback,eye tracking

DiTV SERVICES

Home shoppingHome BankingSmall adsPay per View (e.g. films, big sporting

events,concerts)Games: interactive and networkedChat, email, WebInformation (somewhat like Teletext,

the first iTV in the UK)

DiTV PROGRAMMING

Interactive advertisingTeleshoppingGameshowsNews/Current AffairsEducationalDrama

DiTV AND COMMUNITY

One of the added value aspects of iTV is the opportunity to build community: can offer fan based communities chat

rooms after shows, online with the stars etc game shows can be enhanced by offering

viewers chance to compete documentaries etc. can offer viewers a

chance to respond, get involved in campaigns etc

DiTV CHALLENGE

Handling transitions between ‘observing’ and ‘interacting’

Multi-media aspects: can present same information in many ways

(media equivalent of changing camera angles)

GUIs: getting away from PC/office look and feel new interaction devices (hard and virtual)

required (e.g. the problem with remotes)

A PASSING FAD?

The first movies were comprised entirely of people running around: what was new about movies was - they moved it took a while, but movies got more

interesting!

The breakthrough for movies: when movie makers got over the technology

and got back to the content

iTV: content,content,content…

SUMMARY

Emerging contexts of and platforms for experiencing the web challenge design methods/thinking

Concept of ‘usability’ needs revisingDevelopment methods need changingPeople, Activities,Contexts and

Technologies are harder to specify in emerging markets

Tracking future and emerging trends is important, but difficult to do

TRACKING STRATEGIES

Find reliable sources: professional organisations (e.g. BCS, ACM, etc) watch for conferences (e.g. Ceebit, CHI and

HCI,CSCW, CVE) specialist UI websites (UINET) magazine etc websites ‘trade’ websites (e.g. Macromedia, Adobe,

Microsoft, Philips, Sony, IBM, BT etc) the competition (e.g. case studies)

Visit your sources regularly as part of your professional practice

Follow-up

Tim Berners-Lee “Weaving the Web”: Chapter 13, ‘Machines and the web’

MIT Media Lab website: www.media.mit.edu

Professional bodies: www.bcs.org.uk www.acm.org

Coursework 2

Notes: Submit your website on your public_html

directory Do not alter any files after the hand in date Make sure you give the correct URL for people

to access your site via the web in your report Make sure you set the permissions! If you don’t understand any of the above - get it

sorted in THIS WEEK’S TUTORIALSOtherwise:

Any questions?

Group Activity

Last year telco’s paid vast sums for licenses for next generation mobile phones

This year they are laying off vast numbers of staff

Do you think web access via WAP phones and their next generation equivalents has any future?

Web Development Methods Unit 10: Future Web Applications.

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