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

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

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

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.

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

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

MPEG etc.MPEG etc.

MPEG etc.

Digitization

Segmentation

Keyframe Extraction

Keyword (text)

Surrogates

Keyword (audio)

Metadata

Client(Browser)

Database(MySQL)

AVI

Search

Contribute

Browse

Open Video Server

Production System

Distributed Files

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

Agile Views Framework

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

Relation Browser

Enriched Links:Preview

Enriched Links: Overview

Enriched Links: Shared View

Overviews and Previews: One Screen

The Open Video Project Case

Browse: by Categories & Attributes

Note Results Data

Search: by Category & Attribute

Search: by Free Text & Keyword

Search Results

NoteMouseoverPopup forDetails;Click yieldsNext segmentBib record

Segment Details

Video Transcript Text

Video Segment Preview

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?

AgileViews Overview – Genre: Documentary

NoteOne keyframePer segmentShown onMouseover;Direct selectsupported

AgileViews Overview – Genre: Education

AgileViews Overview – Color/B&W

Previews

Agile Views Preview – Faces

Agile Views Preview – Faces

Agile Views Preview – Superimposition

Agile Views Preview – Brightness

R&D SchemeTASK

CHARACTERISTICS

VIDEOCHARACTERISTICS

INDIVIDUALCHARACTERISTICS

SURROGATECHARACTERISTICS

Dependent Variables:

PERFORMANCE

PREFERENCE

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)

• 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

  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

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

Next Steps (long term) From DLs to the Sharium

DigitalLibrary

ChannelsFilesTools

Contribution Contribution

M e s s a g i n g

Problem Solving/Construction

Problem Solving/Construction

Search/Discovery

Presentation

Search/Discovery

Presentation

The Sharium Work Space

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)

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.

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.

Pointers and Thanks

• www.open-video.org

• www.ils.unc.edu/idl

• Thanks to:– National Science Foundation– North Carolina Networking Initiative– Contributors– NJ ASIST