VoExplorer : Science Design Input

Second Phase

Notes added by Andy Lawrence 2007-08-24

Following the Edinburgh design meeting in May, the "user interface" meeting at UCL, and the consortium meeting in June, Noel has been further developing and completing VoExplorer, within the context of the "Desktop AstroGrid" concept. (See Noel's DesktopAstroGrid wiki pages).

Noel and myself have now arranged a second two-day design meeting, in Edinburgh Sept 5-6. As before, I believe this will work best as a paired team, with me as "design authority", but all other scientists should test out and make input via the VoExplorerComments page.

I note that on the recent Sci team telecon, a question was raised about how this will be presented to users. This is a very good question, but I strongly suggest that top priority is to finish VoExplorer itself first. We could maybe then have a much broader meeting a little later - broader in both people and intent, i.e. version-2 of the UCL interface meeting.

So : launch latest version at DesktopAstroGridSnapshots

Comments please at VoExplorerComments in time for input to Sept 5th meeting.

Notes from second two-day design meeting: VoExplorerDesignMeetingSeptember2007

Old Stuff

Webstart the prototype from http://software.astrogrid.org/voexplorer/voexplorer.jnlp

Prologue

This is a new venture. As part of the current AstroGrid Fitness Review we proposed that components with any kind of user interface should be designed by a scientist-engineer pair. A specific scientist would be allocated to each component and would be responsible for the conceptual design. Consultation should be wide, but we should not design by committee, or leave it to the engineers - a specific scientist will take responsibility.

The Review team also thought that the new experimental "VO Explorer" component built by Noel looked very promising indeed, but was only half done. This was just the right time to step in and make the science input. Your valiant project leader volunteered himself to take on the science design, pour encourager les autres.

Approach

(i) Scientist mugs up on technical background.

(ii) Scientist writes a set of simple "user stories".

(iii) Scientist walks through the user stories to draw some preliminary conclusions.

(iv) Scientist and engineer get together and storyboard or wireframe

(v) Engineer builds draft version.

(vi) Iterate as required.

In parallel, the science team can try out the existing version and submit free form comments and suggestions on a dedicated wiki page. Here are the key pages :

• Noel's Notes on V1 of VoExplorer : also includes the jar download so you can play with it. (Note : more recent version linkd below)

• Comments Page : Free form wiki page - edit comments in here

• User Stories : Blow by Blow

• Structures and Interfaces : Comparisons with Windows Explorer, iTunes etc

• Registry Notes : General notes on VO registries and their metadata

• Design Meeting Notes : Notes from meeting April 19-20

Note 2005-05-04 : current version is 2007.3-alpha-1, incorporating a substantial fraction of the changes discussed at the April design meeting. This is available at

http://software.astrogrid.org/voexplorer/voexplorer-2007.3.alpha1-app.jar

-- AndyLawrence - 21 Mar 2007

-- NoelWinstanley - 23 Apr 2007