relax-plus-think-space/UserStories.md

User story

Julieta, PhD student in Ghent preparing her doctorate thesis on MEMS used for optics in AR

Before VR

Julieta collects 20 PDFs after a searche on DuckDuckGo, Google Scholar, U Ghent library web portal in 1 DropBox directory named “Optical MEMS research” as Monday she has to present her understand of the state of the art to her lab. Typically she would physically print all articles and throw them all the floor of her bedroom. She would like to do so in the library but does not feel comfortable doing so. She would also like to avoid printing all those papers and solely use her laptop but somehow, it does not “feel” the same as to have physically the papers in her hand and move them around.

Once all the papers are on the floor she stands up and step back, looking at her documents, considering the larger goal of completing her PhD, what moatived her to do so, etc. She recalls her past similar task and which ones were the most pleasant and efficient. As she does so she starts physically moving the a paper around chronologically. She finds that the older papers are more referenced by also more outdated. She quickly scans through the papers titles and authors back and forth, noticing how some authors seems more prominent than others. She also consider the length of each paper, wondering if reading the shortest paper first could open up possibilities but she restraints herself from doing so. She gets a notification from a friend suggesting to have a drink this evening but as she is getting stressed by her deadline she replies that she is busy for now and will think about it later, apologises and put her phone in airplane mode. She slowly brings her focus back to the task at hand, looking at the paper sorted from the oldest to the newest. She finds it very superficial and wonder what could help her better understand and summarize what she has founds so what, what order would be the best for her to read all those articles. She takes blue post-it notes and stick them to all papers from the same author, a professor her PhD advisor knows well. She then highlights the different keywords of each article and consider those instead.

She stands up to steps back again wondering if distinct categories based on keywords or research lab of origin could help simplify her organisation. She takes a break to go prepare herself a ginger infusion as she keeps on looking at all articles from afar. Finally she decides that organising by distance to implementation would be the most efficient. She then moves to one corner of her room the 4 papers focusing on the theoretical foundations in physics and chemistry of optical sensors. On the opposite corner she pushes 3 articles focusing on the challenge of scaling production of MEMS due to error rate of specific part of the chemical edging process. She steps back again and in the center leaves all papers, moving them around in a seemingly random fashion. The gradient with its category seems to make more and more sense to her. She then subdivide the space again in zones reflecting how the rate of progress over time bringing 4 papers all the way to the top based on how prolific the research lab was then 3 remaining in the center and finally the last 6 all the way down. Gradually she roughly adjusts based on those two axis. She looks up at her wall noticing the poster her poster on graph theory and notices that most papers with the blue post-it notes falls within the same zone.

She starts to get a clearer view but unfortunately somebody buzzes, a friend reminding her she was supposed to have go out with soon. She lets her in right before snapping a photo of her floor covered with papers. She knows she has to fold back her entire workspace and hates the feeling of being forced to stack all those papers on a pile but she doesn’t have the space to keep it all there and does not feel good letting a friend in with such a mess. She knows the photo will help her to jolt her memory and the categories, gradient and dimensions will be sufficient to go on. She stacks all papers quickly after emailing herself the photo with as title “Monday presentation lab” and in the body “2 axis, theory to prod x rate of progress”. She wishes she could keep an entire room only for this research but instead of dwelving more on it she warmly welcomes her friend who open arrived with flowers and a large smile.

First VR session

Julieta heads back to the U Ghent library to explore a new technique from IMEC that she heard about during a visit to another lab at KUL. She heard the library opened a new VR space allowing researcher to more efficiently organize documents. She is skeptical about it but unlike her latest presentation this time she is not in such a research and register a 30min session to this afternoon. After registering she is invited to connect her DropBox account. She does it allowing access to only a new empty folder name “AR lenses IMEC new process (VR test)” being unsure how safe or efficient that VR tool truly is. She then goes back to her usual online articles discovery, going from the research lab to the bibliography section of the last paper, looking for articles of the same authors, looking for similar research of labs but also private companies like Bell Labs, Intel in Taiwan and Sony Japan. After an hour or so of searches she looks at her DropBox folder and noticed she collected 34 papers. This starts to be more than she can realistically read in the next two weeks. At it is becoming to feel overwhelming she goes have a walk outside before her session in VR starts.

She then comes to the dedicated room wondering what she will have to do. She uses her phone to confirm the appointment and that she is ready. She then puts on the black headset which greets her and asks her to confirm that her name in indeed Julieta. Once she does an environment representing a cartoonish forest appear all around her. Some subtle souns like wind, birds, water become more and more present. For 30 seconds or so nothing seem to happen beside a small “Welcome Julieta” text slightly in front of her. She notices the controlers in her hands are represented by a pair of white gloves. She brings them closer to her face a couple of times. Under the “Welcome Julieta” text more text appears, suggesting her to relax and consider the goal she set aside for this session. More text appear letting her know that her documents are being loaded in her dedicated space. She notices behind her a timer counting down the 30min she set aside for this session.

Finally after a minute her DropBox folder appear with the title she choose earlier “AR lenses IMEC new process (VR test)”. All the articles as PDF are represented as boxes with as cover the front page in the size of an A4 page. The depth of the boxes are different but she is not sure why.

After moving forward slightly she notices she can walk to a box, or document, to be able to read the content more conveniently. Each document appear few seconds after the precedent in no obvious order. She steps back and forth as all the documents are finally displayed as lines of 7 documents forming a 5x7 grid. She steps further back to look at all of them. She starts to wonder if the can apply the same orgnisation she used on the floor of her room few weeks ago.

Unsure if it possible she extends her arm and noticed that when her white glove intersect with a document, the document glows slightly and her controler vibrate. She does it a couple of times until texts appear next to the documents indicating “To move a document, click on button under your index finger”. She tries it, using her thumb at first but then finally moves the document just few centimeters to the left. She repeats it a couple of times then decides to try on another document. She starts to move all documents, spreading them around her randomly. After a minute or so playing around she steps back again, wondering if indeed the classification used before would work. She scans over all documents and find the most theoretical one and brings it to the top left corner, however far she can reach. She repeats the process for few more documents then decides it is already better but not apply so well this time as it is hard for her to assess the rate of progress as well as last time since the process is so recent. She steps back again and wonder what criteria would be more appropriate. She decides that because of the process being new reliability could be interesting. She then moves all papers discussing the fabrication process would go on the right side her space, moving 10 articles there. She moves all other articles on the left. While moving them she notices that quite a few mention potential health concerns and challenges of bio interfaces. She moves those 5 articles to the top.

She notices some remaining articles are probably outdated and wants to remove them. She is not sure how so she moves then behind her back, “Out of sight, out of mind” she thinks. While looking around she notices a + box on her right. She brings her hand to it and a carton like boxes unfolds. A text prompt with a keyboard invites her to name that folder. She is not sure but writes “Outdated”. She then brings all articles that were behind her in that box and see them becoming very small but still visible inside. She looks around her feeling her space already neater. She also notices the time is running out. She wonders what she should do next but before she does a message warns her that “Only 5 minutes left, all content will remain saved in place.”. A metadata document appear and moves with an animation to a 3D logo of DropBox that sits above her, seemingly out of reach. She is not sure what it meant but she feels confident that, like last time at home, her classification is helping her to more efficiently go through her research domain. She looks around her, trying to memorize the space and wonder if it will truly be there next time. As another text “1 minute left, it is now 18:27 and the weather is cloudy in Ghent.” appear before her. A camera shutter sound resonates as a photo of her viewpoint is taken with the name “AR lenses IMEC new process (VR test) _ screenshot.jpg” and also moves back to the DropBox logo. The forest fades away as another text appear “Please remove the headset now. Have a good day Julieta”. She removes the headset and sites for am minute. The web page she used to confirm her presence now displays “Sessions saved” with the screenshot take in VR. She notices that new file in her DropBox and a new directory named “Outdated”. She is quite curious to see if her files are really saved since her DropBox folder, beside the metadata document, screenshot and new direcyory, look just like it was before. She notices the website has a link to explore her “space” on her phone. She sees that her documents are indeed same in the correct position. She feels confident they will remain there and she can’t help but wonder if it is the right place. She unfortunately has to move on but books another session for the following day.

Second VR session

The following day she repeats the process a lot more efficiently and notices right away that all files are indeed exactly where she left them. She gets familiar much more quickly with the environment, the same forest she was inside of last time. She moves the closest document back and forth few time as if to refresh her memory on how to interact. She notices that the 3 new PDFs she added are in center with for each a small yellow start on the top right corner. She promptly move them to the appropriate locate, all 3 going in the right side of her space are they related to the fabrication process. She sees the outdated box and leans closer to it to see all documents in there. She picks one in particular after the small vibration she is now familiar with an pulls it out of the box are it regains is normal size. She skims through quickly and nods confirming that it is indeed too old to consider. She pushes it back in the box as it shrinks. She looks back at the implicit groups she created. She then grabs the Outdated folder and moves it again behind her, away from her focus. She takes a document from the top and moves it to the plus sign.

As it prompts for a name she types “Bio interface”. As the new box includes that documents the quicky moved the 4 other documents. She then brings that new box to the top where all 5 documents were until then. She nods again then steps back. She repeats the process for the two categories and step back again.

The end of the session warning appears with the saving message and screenshot shutter sound letting her know all her work is again saved.

She smiles and removes the headset. She is still unsure she will be ready for her PhD but at least she feels confident she is forming in her mind and thus in her following papers a more synthetic structure of her field of research.

She takes her phone out of her pocket, have a brief look at the screenshot preview and her better structured Dropbox folder then moves back to the other tasks she has to do for the day.

PS: illustrations are in UxResearch/ThinkRelaxMockups with UxResearch/3dMockup for Sketchup source. Illustrations fall under CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0 CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.