Bases para una estrategia de protección integral de la adolescencia

The original stick-e note model employed triggering as a means to provide an automatic method of retrieving data that is related to the user’s current environment. Triggering was conceived as a simple matching process where any stick-e notes that matched the user’s current context were triggered, informing the user, by some undefined means, of the stick-e notes’ active state. For example, in the electronic Post-It note prototype, when a user approached the Häagen-Dazs ice-cream shop a “You are near the ice- cream shop” note may be displayed on the user’s handheld computer. This ‘match and display’ triggering model was conceived in the context of a stick-e note model that was primarily designed for tagging information to location context elements. Since that time the needs and concepts of the stick-e notes have changed, and the triggering model needs to be updated and extended to accommodate these changes.

Compared with the original location-tagged model of stick-e notes the fieldwork tools have a much larger array of context elements that can potentially act as triggers to information, as all fields of the stick-e note are now considered to be context elements. However, it is likely that a user may wish to select only a subset of context elements to act as triggers for stick-e notes. For example, the user may wish to just use the location context element so that all stick-e notes near their current location will trigger despite various other context elements in the stick-e notes not matching the current environment. In addition, rather than triggering stick-e notes that exactly match the user’s current conditions it is likely that there will be an area around the user’s current environment that is of interest, e.g. a temperature range of 30-60 degrees.

Although triggering was not developed further in the prototype, we carefully considered how it could be usefully employed in the Kenyan ecology work. We found that, rather than a single triggering mechanism, there are several potential methods of retrieving stick-e notes in context. Each of these methods are examined in the following sub-sections.

3.2.6.4.1 Passive Retrieval: Viewing Stick-e Notes in the Immediate Area

The first use of triggering that we consider is passive retrieval. This utilises the user’s current context as a key with which to retrieve the set of stick-e notes that is most likely

retrieval” as it is a process that can be continually performed in the background without any participation required from the user, i.e. the user’s role is a passive one, simply receiving triggered stick-e notes.

Perhaps the triggering model could be modified so that instead of dispatching a copy of a triggered stick-e note to interested clients, the state of a stick-e note could be stored within the note itself, which clients could then query or be informed of when it changes. In such a model it would be possible to make the nature of triggering more subtle and sophisticated by introducing different levels of trigger-state. Rather than a simple Boolean active/inactive value, perhaps there could be a ‘Hot’, ‘Warm’, ‘Cool’, and ‘Cold’ state indicating the nearness of the note to the user. Different context element fields of the stick-e note could be at different trigger-states, and parameters for each type of context element could be set to specify the threshold levels for these states. For example, the hot state of a location context could be a value within five metres of the current location, whereas the hot state of temperature maybe a value within two degrees of the current temperature. Some context elements would still have a simple active/inactive state if they had no continuous range of values (e.g. the type of animal), and some context elements may abstain from a trigger-state altogether. Allowing a context element to have no trigger-state effectively eliminates it from being used as a means to establish if the stick-e note it belongs to should trigger, which is useful when the user wants to define a stick-e note’s ‘triggerability’ in terms of a particular subset of context element fields within the note. An average of the trigger- states of all the context element fields of a stick-e note could provide the overall trigger- state for the note.

Rather than popping up a message to display the triggered stick-e notes on screen, a more unobtrusive method of indicating triggering is required to match the subtler model of trigger-state levels. In this regard the current context element visualisations (such as the location context element’s map display) can be enhanced so as to integrate indicators of the stick-e note’s trigger-state. For example, the stick-e note icons displayed in the StickeMap could be changed or animated to indicate the different trigger-states. A discrete indicator bar could be included on some screens to provide quick access to the ‘hottest’ notes. Plotting the notes onto a map or other context element view also lets the user perceive the distribution of stick-e notes across a

Chapter 3: Ecology Fieldwork Tools

particular context element, e.g. showing the spread, concentrations, etc., of notes on a map. This is most useful as it is often the case that the user is more interested in what lies ahead and around them than what is in the current spot. The potential disadvantage of this method if other tasks are being worked on on the PDA in the meantime is that the context visualisations take up much more space on the screen of the device.

3.2.6.4.2 Active Retrieval: Previewing, Searching and Filtering

As opposed to passive retrieval, active retrieval is a form of triggering in which the user does actively participate in order to preview, search for, or filter stick-e notes based on an explicitly specified interest rather than the current context. In the original stick-e note framework this took the form of pretend context elements that were used in trigger processing so that users could preview stick-e notes in a particular area by entering a number of pretend context element values. The triggering engine would treat the set of pretend context elements as current context element values and hence cause the triggering of any stick-e notes that matched these values, e.g. by pretending to be in Canterbury and Nanyuki stick-e notes with location context elements that described either town would be triggered.

Rather than ‘accidentally’ discovering stick-e notes through a passive retrieval mechanism, active retrieval calls for a more comprehensive search mechanism. This is probably more suited to a query mechanism rather than a pretend context model, as the user may wish to specify a set of stick-e notes described by matching multiple context elements, values, and ranges of values. For example, an ecologist may wish to find all the stick-e notes for giraffe observations where the weather has been sunny, the user has been within a two-mile radius of Pelican Dam or Elephant Bridge, and the observation was between 14:00 and 16:00. The resulting set of stick-e notes could then be listed or plotted onto any of the context element visualisations.

In addition to providing a method for searching the collection of stick-e notes, these database-like queries could also be used as a filter mechanism. For example, if the user were only interested in giraffe observation notes a simple query such as “animal = giraffe” could be used as a filter so that only the giraffe notes are active and displayed; notes about other animal observations are restricted by the filter, remain inactive, and

computer, filtering will also be very useful on the desktop computer to allow the user to specify what subset of stick-e notes they wish to take out into the field.

These methods are essentially employing conventional database / information retrieval techniques to the collection of stick-e notes.

Thus far we have talked about previewing and searching as mechanisms to find stick-e notes from their context. Another important aspect of searching is to find the actual physical context from the stick-e note that is attached to it. Some form of navigation screen would be desirable that would help the user locate the stick-e note within their current environment, e.g. by informing the user how far away the note is and in what direction, or informing them of the temperature difference, etc. For example, an ecologist may want to re-examine and update information about some elephant dung by finding the location of a stick-e note that was previously created to describe it.

3.2.6.4.3 Alerts

The previous methods of passive and active retrieval work well for stick-e notes that the user knows about or for ones that the user wants to find out about. However, there are some stick-e notes that the user may not know of but which they should be actively alerted of. Some of these messages may be ‘disposable’ (e.g. a pager message that can be discarded once read) whereas others are permanently associated with certain conditions (e.g. a warning that you are approaching the firing range which is in use today).

3.2.6.4.4 Re-triggering and De-triggering

These were important issues in the original stick-e note framework discussed in chapter two because hovering around the boundary of a context element value could cause the same note to repeatedly pop-up, e.g. walking near the Cathedral perimeter may cause the “You are at the Cathedral” stick-e note to pop-up continually. The new triggering methods proposed reduce the impact of this boundary-hovering because instead of simply popping up stick-e notes that meet a set of conditions, the trigger-state of the stick-e notes are changed as the user approaches them and this gradually changing state is non-obtrusively made apparent to the user. However, this is only the case if the

Chapter 3: Ecology Fieldwork Tools

context element values are relatively continuous and do not jump from one coarse value to another without warning, e.g. a hot to cold transition.

Re-triggering and de-triggering are still issues that need to be explored but the negative effects that they address are reduced in the proposed new model of triggering.