Dynamic Interfaces for Digital Libraries: The Open Video Project

1. Dynamic Interfaces for Digital Libraries: The Open Video Project Gary Marchionini University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill march@ils.unc.edu NJ/ASIST Distinguished Lecture April 4, 2002

2. Outline • User Interfaces as crucial elements of DLs • Overview of Open Video Project • Agile Views interface framework • Open Video examples of AVs • User study example and near term plans • Long term implications • Summary

3. Observations • Physical libraries architect space to aid information seeking • Librarians interact with patrons in many ways: • Show a welcoming face • Clarify needs and queries • Assist with retrieval and use • Digital libraries depend on the user interface to serve these purposes, thus user interfaces are crucial to success of high-volume digital libraries

4. Interface Principles for DLs • Consider physical and conceptual interface issues. • Consider representations and user control mechanisms. • Provide a multiplicity of indexes (representations): Help people help themselves. • Minimize user effort: A click is a radical act. • Use a variety of iterative user studies to understand user needs, common tasks, and interface effects.

5. Open Video Project • Goals • Create an open source DL for use by researchers, students, and the public. • A testbed for interactive interfaces • An environment for building a theory of human information interaction • Ongoing work: begun 1995 with colleagues at UMD • Current funding: NSF# IIS-0099538, NCNI • Collaborators: I2-DSI, ibiblio, CMU, UMD, NIST, Internet Archive • www.open-video.org

7. Current Status • ~ 0.5 TB of content • ~1600 video segments • ~1100 different titles • ~2000 unique visitors per month • I2-DSI video channel • OAI provider • Ongoing user studies

8. Open Video Server Distributed Files Database (MySQL) AVI Search Client (Browser) MPEG etc. Browse Contribute MPEG etc. MPEG etc. Digitization Segmentation Keyframe Extraction Production System Keyword (text) Keyword (audio) Surrogates Metadata

9. Agile Views Interface • Provide a variety of access representations (e.g., indexes) and control mechanisms • Usual search and browse capabilities • Leverage both visual and linguistic cues • Create and test surrogates for overview and preview

10. Agile Views Framework

11. Evolution of Agile View Design Techniques • Various dynamic query interfaces (HCIL UMD) • Relation Browser (BLS, SILS seminars) • Federal statistics, overviews of relationships (several different partitions). Useful for small number of attribute sets, each with small number of attribute values. Backend database of metadata, Java applet interface • Enriched Links (Sony Labs) • Complex web sites, previews, overviews, and reviews of pages. Backend computation and Javascript interface • Integrated overviews and previews (BLC UMD) • Multimedia digital library, backend computation, Java applet interface

12. Relation Browser

13. Enriched Links:Preview

14. Enriched Links: Overview

15. Enriched Links: Shared View

16. Overviews and Previews: One Screen

17. The Open Video Project Case

18. Browse: by Categories & Attributes Note Results Data

19. Search: by Category & Attribute

20. Search: by Free Text & Keyword

21. Search Results Note Mouseover Popup for Details; Click yields Next segment Bib record

22. Segment Details

23. Video Transcript Text

24. Video Segment Preview

25. Research Agenda 2001-04 • What kinds of surrogates to provide for overviews and previews? • Currently, we are designing and testing cost-benefit tradeoffs for: • Storyboards • text keywords • audio keywords • Slideshows • text keywords • audio keywords • Fast-forwards • Integration of many specific good ideas lead to emergence or chaos?

26. AgileViews Overview – Genre: Documentary Note One keyframe Per segment Shown on Mouseover; Direct select supported

27. AgileViews Overview – Genre: Education

28. AgileViews Overview – Color/B&W

29. Previews

30. Agile Views Preview – Faces

31. Agile Views Preview – Faces

32. Agile Views Preview – Superimposition

33. Agile Views Preview – Brightness

34. R&D Scheme

36. User Study 1: Explore Surrogate Space (Fall 01) • five video surrogates compared • Storyboard (6x6 grid of keyframes) with text keywords • Storyboard with audio keywords • Slide show (keyframes displayed @ 250ms per frame) with text keywords • Slide show with audio keywords • Fast forward (at 4 times original speed)

37. 10 subjects with video experience (about 2 hours each) • Two phases • Three surrogates for each of four videos • Preferences changed over time, support for ff development • Gist meant: topicality, narrative structure, and visual style • One surrogate (free choice) for each of 3 videos • write statement of gist • Select statements of gist • Object recognition (textual) • Object recognition (visual) • Action recognition • Visual gist

38. Best Worst Gist determination, free text Slide show w/ audio keywords Storyboard w/ text keywords Storyboard w/ audio keywords Fast forward Gist determination, multiple-choice Fast forward Slide show w/ audio keywords Storyboard w/ text keywords Storyboard w/ audio keywords Object recognition, textual Storyboard w/ text keywords Fast forward Slide show w/ audio keywords Storyboard w/ audio keywords Object recognition, graphical Storyboard w/ text keywords Slide show w/ audio keywords Fast forward Storyboard w/ audio keywords Action recognition Fast forward Storyboard w/ text keywords Storyboard w/ audio keywords Slide show w/ audio keywords Visual gist Storyboard w/ audio keywords Storyboard w/ text keywords Slide show w/ audio keywords Fast forward

39. Next Steps (short term) • Study 2 (spring 02) • Compare different fast forward rates • 30 subjects • Interactive Shared Educational Environment (ISEE) for video (remote study) • CHI 02 • The commons with demos and study of narrativity • Summer study (02) • Eye-tracking study of effects of textual and audio cues

40. Next Steps (long term) From DLs to the Sharium

41. Integration Hypothesis • As information resources and technologies are integrated as digital libraries (sharia or collaboratories), institutional boundaries will blur. Examples: • Types of learning (formal, informal, professional) • Types of libraries • Levels of government (local, state, federal)

42. Long-Term Implications for Social Sciences Research • What does it mean when you can have everything you can possibly access anywhere, available everywhere? Removing the bounds of access implies ubiquity and augmented memory. What does it then mean to be informed? Intelligent? Consider a cascading set of issues such as trust, ownership/IP, communication, human relationships, and socio-technical symbiosis.

43. Summary: Open Video as Testbed • Give people many ‘views’ to look ahead • Make these views easy to manipulate (agile) • Challenges • Mapping video characteristics to surrogates (e.g., keyframes, keywords), mapping surrogates to control mechanisms (e.g., mouse actions) • Automating production processes • Use the repository, contribute to the repository! We would especially like to include cultural video in the collection.

44. Pointers and Thanks • www.open-video.org • www.ils.unc.edu/idl • Thanks to: • National Science Foundation • North Carolina Networking Initiative • Contributors • NJ ASIST