Designing Composite Applications

IDV Solutions is in the middle of building a multi-phased Silverlight demo application, mostly go get to know Silverlight for ourselves.  We also wanted to make something we could release publicly at incremental stages of completion.  Here is a short comment on my experience so far and some unfounded prognostication...

Baseless Unsubstantiated Forecast
It's been an interesting learning process and I see a lot of potential (and I suppose inevitability) in Silverlight.  Microsoft will undoubtedly grab market share currently held by Flash/Flex and those lingering Java Applets.  Why?  Developers will migrate in droves.  Silverlight is a developer's product with the addition of design.  Flash is a designer's product that had programmability added to it.  There will be piles of developers who feel right at home in Visual Studio who will be more than happy to trade in their ActionScript files.  The hurdle will be pulling designers in.

Silverlight and Flash
The comparisons are inevitable.  Flash was animation software for vector animation and banner ads that has incrementally been extended with frame based commands and then much more.  What is possible now in flash is fantastic and it has been an interesting evolution, but the animation legacy is clear (it's a serious gear shift for developers to work within enveloped sets of timelines and action paths).  And it's interesting to see the foundation that Microsoft is building without having to support a legacy of passive animation.
Silverlight is much less timeline/frame based.  Instead, it recognizes that animations are, in interactive applications, segregated short visual transitions, or motions activated by direct active user control.  It was very hard for me to get out of the nested movie-clip mindset (where it is warm and cozy) but I see the merit.

A XAML file in Blend

Performance
There are several blogs out there that can provide more test-driven discussions of the performance merits of the Silverlight plug in, but in my anecdotal experience it is just as responsive as our Flash client.  We loaded our map viewer with points lines and polygons and zoomed and rotated and inflicted general abuse that would have brought an AJAX app to its knees, and it continued to be smooth and responsive.

The Silverlight Demo

Division of Labor
Much of the marketing around Blend/Silverlight seems to promote the notion of the separation of specialties.  Designers can do what they do best and developers go ahead and do what they do best and the results merge seamlessly into a supersweet application.  But I had to work much more closely with our lead developer, Justin Hoffman, on this Silverlight demo than I have with any Flash project.  Probably because I am a relative stranger to the .NET development environment and any visual content I made came after rounds of tentative creation and second guessing.  "How do I integrate this...how you say...markup?"  About half of the man-hours spent were at the same workstation sketching, debating, and waving hands.  Silverlight will be similar to Flash in that for a person or organization to really nail an application, they had better be good at design and development.  Silverlight should please artistic developers, while Flash will be a favorite of relatively tech-savvy designers into the near future.  In all, I am terribly happy with how it is going, and we have had some good feedback from the public.

The Talent Intersection (and where folks may find relative comfort)

Following the initial learning curve, creating Silverlight applications with Blend and Visual Studio will likely be a welcome transition for our developers.  For me, it will be a tougher transition, as I suppose it will be of many other UX/interaction designers.  But I am happy with the level of support the Blend editor provides for creating the Silverlight XAML (especially the June Preview with enhanced Control Template editing), especially considering that these products are still in beta -people are making some very cool things.  More to come.  It is a fun time to be in the business.

John Nelson / IDV Solutions / john.nelson@idvsolutions.com

http://silverlight.idvsolutions.com/

It's out!  Check out the new draw features in the IDV Solutions Silverlight Demo.  We've been working on some fun new draw tools in an effort to learn about Silverlight.  We are excited about the direction Silverlight is taking and the increased controls offered in Blend.  This demo is using the latest build of Silverlight, Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2.  Make sure you have the right player (you can install it here)

So we have the same fun navigation scheme as before, where you can zoom and spin and fling the earth the way you always wanted.  But now you can draw and export your map drawings to other map applications.  Anyways, here are some descriptions of the draw tools...

The Draw Panel along the right of the screen lets you turn the drawing feature on or off, select the type of feature to draw, and ultimately export the drawing as a KML file.Expanding the carrot next to each of the three geometry types expands a sidewalk that holds some visual variables, in this case color.  But someday each square of the sidewalk will hold a category of visual variable, like color, size, transparency...and that square of the sidewalk can expand as well.
If you want to change the color of something after you have drawn it, then select it and open the color sidewalk and choose something else.

To delete any item that you've drawn, select it to show its data window and select "erase."  When erased, points erupt into a cloud of destruction.  Lines and polygons just disappear into the ether.  Forever.  If you want to delete individual tics along a line or area, select it then click the delete key.  Above, I am obliterating a point feature that I had dropped in the Alleghenies.

Drop points all over the map.  When you add a point, a window appears asking for some descriptive information.  Fill it in -or don't.  Clicking and holding an existing point picks it up for re-positioning.  If the pushpin did not lift up when it was time to move, then large canyons would be gouged throughout the world.  Above, I am moving a point symbol onto home plate at Comerica Park.

Here I am tracing the land area of Martha's Vineyard and delineating the DMZ between North and South Korea.  I double-clicked to stop drawing a feature, then I filled in the info box associated with each feature.

When drawing lines and areas, click a path on the map to trace out your line in the map by clicking to drop a tic (or bend in the line).  Double-click to stop drawing the line or area.  Between each tic is a ghost tic option, if you want to add more detail to the line or area.  By drawing from general to specific, you can rough in an area then zoom in and activate those ghost tics for loads of detail.  Here, I roughed out South America, then positioned my ghost tics to add more and more details.  Then I zoomed in and added even more detail.  It is addictive.

At any point I can save my drawing as a KML file.  Above, I have generated the shape of Michigan that I drew as a KML file and loaded it into Virtual Earth Live Maps.

So again, here is the URL to the demo: http://silverlight.idvsolutions.com/
and here is the URL to the latest Silverlight player: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx?v=2.0

John Nelson / IDV Solutions / john.nelson@idvsolutions.com

IDV Solutions has recently worked with Microsoft, the International Telecommunication Union (an affiliate of the United Nations), and the World Summit on the Information Society to create an interactive map (Beta) of the current and planned global telecommunication infrastructure, with a focus on the Connect Africa initiative.

Users can browse stats, check current coverage, and drill down into more detailed statistical data.  Additionally, external data such as GeoRSS feeds or KML files can be pulled in by the user in an ad-hoc manner to further contextualize the data.  Anyways, check it out, have fun...

http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/connect/gblview/index.html

John Nelson / IDV Solutions / john.nelson@idvsolutions.com

Here are some of the more common composite application-related web searches that point folks to IDVUX...

Q: why is virtual earth so dark
http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4ADBR_enCA247CA247&q=why+is+virtual+earth+so+dark

A: I have been asked this question often by clients.  I assume the person wondering about this is referring to the Aerial style at global zoom levels; which is quite dark.  I don't know why it is as dark as it is -maybe to visually promote the white text labeling?

The source is a composite of cloud-free sections of satellite imagery courtesy the NASA Earth Observatory.  The Satellite platform used is NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS).  How did even NASA manage to snag a shot of Lansing, Michigan, not draped in clouds?  I don't know.

I see this imagery used by just about all of the big map-service providers at the higher zoom levels, and the Virtual Earth implementation of this imagery is quite a bit darker than the rest, and it does appear as though the darkening is intentional.  Below is a comparison of the Caribbean as seen in Virtual Earth (top image), and the same screenshot with the brightness and saturation bumped up (bottom image).  It starts to look a lot like the other guys'.  In the brighter version you can see that there is even a little coastal shelf bathymetric indication in the NASA imagery.

Q: silverlight virtual earth
http://www5.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLJ_enDK214DK214&q=silverlight+virtual+earth&ei=SS0zSNWPGovOiAGqodHHAQ&redir_esc=www5

A: IDV has recently released a simple public map viewer that has been built from the ground up in Microsoft Silverlight.  This is the first release in a series of Silverlight demos that will have progressively more features and doodads.  Up next? Draw Tools!

A snapshot of the geographic drawing tools in the next release of the IDV Silverlight Virtual Earth demo.

Q: 3d mapping projection
http://www5.google.com/search?hl=en&q=3d+mapping+projection&btnG=Google+Search&ei=nQojSLizKpOoiAHJqeT5Cw&redir_esc=www5

A: Google Earth requires their streaming overlay imagery to be in the Equirectangular projection (a.k.a. Plate Caree or any of the spelling variants and mis-identified as simply WGS1984, Lat Long, or unprojected) in order for it to drape correctly.  Virtual Earth 3D uses their 2D quad key tiled image set and warps it (to equirectangular) non-linearly over their sphere.  More info here: http://idvux.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2EB6AAF6C3AC1EBE!177.entry

Q: silverlight 3d earth globe
http://www5.google.com/search?q=silverlight+3d+earth+globe&rls=com.microsoft:en-nz&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&ei=wtE2SKrHJJGsiAG8-qHLCA&redir_esc=www5

A: Silverlight does not support 3D yet.  But it would be awesome if it did someday.

Q: How does water comes into our flat
http://www.baidu.com/baidu?sr=6E26ABFFE2B0B01CE336805DFC9AD18F8FD9A249&tn=nanlingcb&word=%20How%20does%20water%20comes%20into%20our%20flat&bar=0

A: Somehow the Baidu search engine pointed this unfortunate person to IDVUX.  Anyways...the water could be getting into the flat in any number of ways, including poorly sided exterior walls or a roofing material that has failed or enables water to pool.  If you are the topmost floor of your building, then you might have a roof that is collecting or damming water to the point where it is able to flow over the sealed or staggered roofing material.  More likely, though, a tenant above you has a malfunctioning plumbing system.  You should call your super as soon as possible, as dampness or repeated inundations can cause the structural materials of your flat to weaken, or worse, it could facilitate a mold problem -which can have serious and acute health consequences.

John Nelson / IDV Solutions / john.nelson@idvsolutions.com

http://silverlight.idvsolutions.com/

Alright!  We have just posted a simple Silverlight 2.0 map viewer that pulls in Virtual Earth map imagery and lets you navigate their quad-key tileset.  This navigator is step one in our set of Silverlight mapping applications demo; more to come!  Be sure to get the latest Silverlight 2.0 plugin.

What is new?

Pseudo Physics
As map clients grow into more natural model of the world, the inclusion of simulated physics provides a more natural realm of interaction.  We all have certain expectations for interacting with things in the real world, namely the conservation of momentum and friction.  To not factor those into a user experience is to introduce the absolutely foreign (and creepy) concept of snapping in and out of existence.  So our map viewer has a velocity vector (speed and direction) to replicate the feeling of momentum.  Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

But in addition to conserving momentum, friction is a critical element.  When you throw our map, it glides then comes to a stop.  Some interfaces continue momentum forever, like a frictionless ether.  But here on earth, things eventually come to a rest.  They ease out of their velocity vector.

This viewer is also different from some Silverlight image navigators in that it grips when the mouse is pressed so when you want to drag that map you drag the map, rather fanning it in the desired direction.

Navigation Paradigm
This navigation interface is a departure from our previous layouts, and incorporates some of the ideas discussed in IDVUX, the flyer vs. reeler discussion in particular.  We have oriented the zoom-out input to the top, and the zoom-in input to the bottom, to reinforce the notion of flying down for a closer look.  The zoom down nature is a more naturally mapped interface widget.

We retained the zoom slider, rather than two in/out throttle controls for two reasons:
1) It is the fastest, best way we have found to dive in and out quickly.
2) It is a great indication of status.  You see how much zoom-room is available above you and below you.  It is a worthwhile visual element even if you don't drag it.  I am reminded of the great Mitch Hedberg...

"I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an 'escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.'"

Rotation
Why?  Not because it is useful in 2D in any way, but it's just neat.  And for research demos, neat counts!  So there is a disk around the representational globe that connotes the cardinal directions, and the disk can be rotated, driving the rotation of the map view.

It is interesting how entrenched we are in our north-centric expectations.  Try this -turn on aerial map style then align east towards the top of the screen (that's what someone in the middle ages would expect as the norm).  Very obvious landmarks become hard to recognize!

Also, you can throw the disk, replicating the last thing a doomed parachutist sees.

The rotation feature is also a gateway feature for when a 3D client is released -where rotation becomes essential.  And see that globe?  One fine day it will be a navigation input in addition to a nebulous indication of down.

Anyways...
Have fun.  Silverlight is a new beast and we are still learning the benefits of a vector engine driven by markup.  It is a fun ride.  Justin Hoffman, our senior developer, is digging in and architecting some fantastic things; more to come.

http://silverlight.idvsolutions.com/

John Nelson / IDV Solutions / john.nelson@idvsolutions.com

Another quick Q and A based on some searches that tend to drive people to IDVUX.

Q: "Known Unknown Matrix"
A:

This query, or equivalents, drive a lot of traffic through to this site.  A colleague of mine here at IDV, Christopher Abraham, wrote a targeted post on the benefits of an enterprise-class mashup, not just for gaining insights, but for identifying needs. The matrix he describes is a derivative of the Johari Window, a cognitive tool used by psychologists to identify how self-aware (or not) one may be. Here it is... http://idvux.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2EB6AAF6C3AC1EBE!557.entry

Q: Datum vs Projection
A:

vs.

Two totally different things.  One is the presumed general shape of the world, the other is the geometric method of peeling it off and flattening it onto paper, or your screen (yes, even 3D viewers use flattened maps!). More info on Datums... http://idvux.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2EB6AAF6C3AC1EBE!207.entry Flattening ratio? http://idvux.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2EB6AAF6C3AC1EBE!264.entry

Q: X_Ray Vision
A:

 The Right Tool for the Job

Here is a picture of my dog, Apple, at bathtime.  Clearly this is not the kind of environment where she feels she belongs.  She's soaking wet -but that's not the problem; water is not bad.  Maybe she doesn't find the context to be one where she can most vibrantly express herself.  In any case, she's not the picture of contentment. I, from an Apple management perspective, think the context is great.  She is manageable, not going anywhere, and on her way to cleanness

Here, all is well for Apple.  She still finds herself immersed in water, but this time the context is much different than the bath tub.  It's outside, there are other dogs, my son Bear is there to play with, and she has almost absolute control over the situation. But if I wanted to give Apple a bath, a rocky lakeshore isn't my preference.  If I want to get to know Apple a little better, really see what she is about, this is a much better environment than a bath tub.

Both the bath tub and the lakeshore are important environments for Data...I mean Apple, for different reasons.

Workflow
I hear a lot about the tyranny of the spreadsheet, and even use the phrase myself.  But to qualify that, the spreadsheet is an outstanding tool for adding, sorting, formulating, storing data -and more.  But this tabular view is certainly not the environment where grouping, trending, combining, tracking, or predictive attempts are most readily made.

Enterprise Mashups, Visual Composite Applications, Geo Portals, whatever you prefer to call them, are an ideal way to provide folks a means of spreadsheet management but then the content can then go on to fuel powerful visual applications where the data is presented right were we like it -in time and location.  A successful geospatial content manager/visualization will enable both.  If you have an Excel file or a SharePoint MOSS list or library, go ahead and throw it into Virtual Earth or Google Earth as a GeoRSS or KML.  That's where it wants to be.

 
IDV's Visual Fusion software supports table-to-visualization workflows.  See it in Excel, then see it in Virtual Earth...and back. 

Models of the Universe
Every data management or visualization tool you use is really a model of the Universe.  Some tools provide a lot of abstraction, and some are better off as more literal Mini-Me's of reality.  Spreadsheets present the world as numeric representations arranged in rows and columns.  This level of abstraction is absolutely necessary for many types of data management, but when it comes to turning that data loose, where insight and actionability are more likely, then the model of the universe used by your tool might more closely resemble, well...planet Earth.

John Nelson / IDV Solutions / john.nelson@idvsolutions.com

This appliance gets the better of me about half the time.  Instead of blaming my lame mental decoding, I choose to cite this as a usability issue: I just can't make quick sense of those burner dials. Shameful evidence of my attempt to make these controls more obvious.

I rate my ability to turn on the correct burner of my stovetop at about 50%.  That is pretty terrible, and while I make no claims of genius, I don't think that I am that dense.  But maybe relatively slow minds like my own are good tests of usability...specifically, natural mapping. Donald Norman, a leading usability consultant and author, discussed "natural mapping" in the first chapter of his excellent book, The Design of Everyday Things.  Natural mapping provides users controls whose arrangement and movement correlate directly to the real world, the goal of which is to provide users immediate understanding of the control and require of them less intermediate mental decoding. Don uses the example of an automobile seat-tilt control that is shaped like a seat.  I used to drive a 1989 Lincoln Mark VII that had a seat tilt control that was shaped just like the seat itself.  Don's right, it ruled -especially since this control is rather hidden near the floor and could only be found by groping around; pushing a little mini-seat around to control the real seat sure made things easier. Every physical control ought to be a naturally mapped as possible.  I am surprised, though, that many default map interfaces are relying more on flat hypertext-y buttons to drive some very cool, fluid, navigation dimensions.  Text-only individual navigation buttons for each of the navigable dimensions requires additional mental decoding -wasted milliseconds. What would a naturally mapped navigation toolset look like for a 3D Earth application?  Toss someone a basketball and ask them to find the label...and watch what they do.  That's natural mapping.

John Nelson / IDV Solutions / john.nelson@idvsolutions.com

I've just returned from GITA's 2008 Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions conference in Seattle, WA.  Thanks much to GITA and all who attended the presentation; I met a lot of interesting folks and was impressed with the speakers.  My presentation, Beyond Mashups: The Enterprise Geo-Portal, went well, considering my mid-presentation dead laptop battery ("...anybody know any good jokes?").  In that harrowing few minutes of reboot, I polled the audience on their Flyer vs. Reeler persuasion -a fun diversion.
Here are the pamphlet details of the talk...

Turnout
I was surprised and pleased with the excellent turnout (crowds in the back and the pulling in of additional chairs!); further indication of the substantial interest in Geospatial Portals within the enterprise and the public sector.  There is clearly a surging interest in a useable  online geospatial content management system to best take advantage of the considerable investment that organizations have made and are making in GIS and visualization, and how best to integrate the universe of cloud data that is begging to provide timely context to that investment.

The Gist
I focused on describing common issues confronting clients building geospatial portals and some best practices we have identified.  All of this was, of course, shared with the overarching goal of promoting a geospatial portal who's User Experience is positive, truthful, and actionable.

The introductory slide in my deck: The World's First Mashup.  It is John Snow's 1854 visualization of medical data mashed onto a map of London.

Materials
I was asked a lot of questions just after the session, but did not get the chance to address them individually or in as much detail as I would have liked.  If you are interested in a copy of the presentation materials, you can download the paper here:
http://cid-2eb6aaf6c3ac1ebe.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Presentation%20Materials/BeyondMashups_GITA.doc
I tend to veer around topics as the result of a cursory audience poll, so these materials are not a transcription by any means.  But I hope you find them helpful and relevant.  Or if you have a question, please don't hesitate to contact me at john.nelson@idvsolutions.com.

John Nelson / IDV Solutions / john.nelson@idvsolutions.com

These ideas are extremely applicable to the Composite Application realm, in that mashups and composite apps generally benefit from the commoditized content that is available now or emerging from the Internet, and particularly Web 2.0. By allowing disparate data sets to be accessed and displayed in a contextual user interface like a map or a timeline, Interpretation of that data can lead to insight and knowledge. By quickly making it possible for individuals or groups to incorporate data feeds (either in an ad hoc fashion or easy administrative access/control), the composite application brings Immediacy and Personalization to the user experience. Composite Applications, being kind of like the grown-up big brother of mashups, benefit additionally from being able to incorporate data feeds or sources that come from contractually “leased,” trusted content providers that guarantee Authenticity and in many cases provide Accessibility that many free content sources lack (the kind of sources that tend to be leveraged by mashups). Perhaps the most valuable of the “generatives” that Kelly details is the last one on his list: Findability. IDV has been excited to see Search for the Enterprise advancing to include the time and geospatial elements of content, allowing for our products and solutions to provide a contextual view of that data in a new and useful way (see previous blog entry on Enterprise Search). Kelly sums up the impact of this “commoditized” information world by stating, “These eight qualities require a new skill set. Success in the free-copy world is not derived from the skills of distribution since the Great Copy Machine in the Sky takes care of that. Nor are legal skills surrounding Intellectual Property and Copyright very useful anymore. Nor are the skills of hoarding and scarcity. Rather, these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.” In many ways, if Kevin Kelly’s “generatives” nomenclature catches on, then composite application products like IDV’s Visual Fusion are the “generative toolkits” that will allow people to learn and use their new skill sets.

Christopher Abraham / IDV Solutions