Monday, March 7, 2011

Paper Reading #14 - Chronicle: Capture, Exploration, and Playback of Document Workflow Histories

Comments:
//comment 1
//comment 2

Reference:
Chronicle: Capture, Exploration, and Playback of Document Workflow Histories
Tovi Grossman, Justin Matejka, George Fitzmaurice
UIST '10

Summary:
Chronicle is a system designed to provide a revision history for documents.  In this way, the user will be able to keep the information that is lost during document editing, whether it be deleted data or the sequence of commands necissary to accomplish a certain task.  This wil aid people who decide that they are unhappy with a change they made, or people who wish to learn a complex sequence from a more skilled peer.

The display shows a list of before and after thumbnails called chronicles.  Each chronicle represents a revision and contains workflow information.  One of the main tools that Chronicle offers is a variety of probes that can be used to observe changes in a specific area.  These include data, ui, and selection probes.  A number of filters are used to select specific times, layers, users, tools and workflows.  The timeline feature allows the user to see and control playback of previous work done on a document.  It also indicates key events to improve the ease of browsing.  It too has seperate controls for tools, colors, layers, users, notes, and activities.

Eith participants were used in the evaluation of Chronicle.  After a brief demo, the participants were given a document with 2 hours of time loaded and were told to complete certain tasks.  These tasks took an average of ten minutes to complete.  The participants were extremely impressed with Chronicle, rating only 3 subtools under a 6 on a scale of 1 to 7.

Discussion:
I must admit, I was less than excited when I first read the title of this paper.  After the first paragraph, however, I was reading with wide-eyed engrossment.  This is an incredible tool that can be applied to things like photo, video, and text documents.  Considering that it took novice users only ten minutes able to complete fairly complex tasks on a two hour recorded document, it can be said that this is a very intuitive system.  I am excited about chronicle, and look forward to using it sometime in the (hopefully not too distant) future.
Posted by at
Labels:

4 comments:

  1. PaolaMarch 8, 2011 at 7:23 AM

    I was also surprised for how fast the participants of the study were able to complete their list of tasks. Even though Chronicle may give the impression of being complicated to use with their time-line and hierarchy of modifications, it seems that it is easy to understand and use.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shena HoffmannMarch 8, 2011 at 9:08 AM

    I agree that this paper turned out to be much more interesting than I originally thought. I think it would be very useful for speeding up many complicated tasks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stuart J.March 8, 2011 at 9:35 AM

    I'd love to see this technology implemented in the real world, it's hard to complain about speed increases with a low learning curve.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Adam FriedliMarch 8, 2011 at 8:15 PM

    Yeah, I had the same attitude about the paper. But the introduction explained very well what this program was all about. Long and complicated tasks could benefit greatly from this in being able to repeat work by reviewing what was done in previous projects. Chronicle really needs to be released to a wider audience.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)