The recent announcement by Apple has gotten me thinking....
I am wondering about the viability of running IMR on an I-Pad as
InterMapper/Touch (assuming support).
There is some interest here in being able to use IMR as a
monitoring tool in
remote machine rooms to provide negative (or positive) feedback to
staff
doing maintenance (reconfigurations) of various sorts. The idea is
to have
a resident display that would alert staff in near-time of the
(negative/unforeseen???) consequences of their actions.
The requirements seem to be:
1) dedicated device -- to keep it from being used for other purposes
ensuring IMR is topmost/foremost/active
2) continuously on display -- giving status at a glance
3) portable device -- facilitating use in alternate locations in an
area to
ensure easy visibility when working behind a rack or on the other
side of
the room.
4) Keyboard not needed and probably bothersome.
5) Touch screen probably (open to discussion/question) better for
some/many/most??? types of navigation.
6) Perhaps -- a more user friendly, intuitive, drill-down interface.
Alternatives:
1) Personal laptop -- These same folks often have IMR on laptops
but don't
carry them around for various reasons including having other
applications
active, portability, form factor, power provisioning.
2) Dedicated laptop -- form factor limits use, generally limited to
table
top situations -- not well suited to wall mounting, perhaps
navigation too
cumbersome (open question).
3) Dedicated workstation -- might permit multiple screens but
consumes more
space and not really portable within a room.
There are a variety of cross over points here and I am trying to
understand
what they are and where they might occur. I am trying to avoid the
allure
of the "glitzy" and focus on utility.
Some considerations:
1) The touch screen navigation would likely focus navigation toward
drill-down and make it more intuitive and ad-hoc. There may be some
navigational anomalies between a touch screen approach and the
traditional
mouse approach. Would it be possible to deterministically map
(unambiguously
translate) between the two forms of navigation and in a way that
would
minimize frustration when moving between the two schemes and make
automatic
translation between the two environments possible?
2) Initially map editing would probably not be a feature on the
"touch"
version.
3) One consideration is that a cursor has a fairly fine selection
granularity (although often not fine enough in a crowded map to
grab a
desired link without several tries) fingers require large areas
which tend
to be implemented as buttons. This would make the "hover interface
line,
right click, select status" sequence problematic because fingers do
not have
degree of granularity. One approach would be to select the
interface label
rather than interface line, but this runs afoul of the different
semantics
between hover interface line, select, status and the hover
interface label,
select status sequence (which by the way I find very confusing).
4) Will drill-down chains become too long (too cumbersome) and if
so how
might one make them easier(shorter???).
5) This probably means a different kind of InterMapper but most
likely it
must be closely related to the classic version as maintaining two
platforms
is out of the question. If one is stuck with editing only the
classic
version will/can that yield an acceptable "touch" version/
experience as a
derivative? Much of this revolves around the notion of how would
"classic"
and "touch" relate or even impact the design of the other?
I don't foresee giving up my laptop IMR/classic for traditional
use, but I
am intrigued about the possibility of touch based drill-down
navigation
device for use as a "field monitor".
Thoughts?
For your brain storming pleasure....
-Dave Cooley
Colby College
