Knowledge Nebula Crystallizer for Time-based Information

Shigeki Amitani, Ernest Edmonds

Creativity & Cognition Studios, Faculty of IT, University of Technology, SydneyPO Box 123 Broadway, NSW 2007, AUSTRALIAshigeki@it.uts.edu.au, ernest@ernestedmonds.com

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we are going to describe a system for managing and authoring time-based information artefact, asan implementation of Knowledge Nebula Crystallizer [9].The design rationale of the system and its implementationare described.

Categories & Subject Descriptor:

H5.2. User Interfaces.

General Terms:

Design

Keywords:

Knowledge creation; Knowledge Liquidization& Crystallization; Knowledge Nebula Crystallizer;creativity support; time-based information;

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this research is to develop a supporting systemfor managing and authoring time-based informationartefacts, indebted to the principles of both knowledgecreation and human-computer interaction. In order to provide a consistent support for managing and authoring process, we are going to develop a system based on two perspectives: design perspective and knowledge creation perspective. In this paper a system “Knowledge NebulaCrystallizer for Time-based Information” is described.

TWO FUNDAMENTAL PERSPECTIVESDesign Perspectives

A number of studies on content-based video and soundinformation retrieval, aiming at managing large archives of multimedia, have been conducted [13, 14, 21]. The focus of these studies has been mainly on retrieval and clusteringalgorithms based on their physical features. Of course thisis an indispensable technology for dealing with non-verbalinformation archives, however, it is necessary to design a proper representations of the retrieved information andinteractions to support authoring processes. Tools should bedesigned with considering human cognitive processes [12].Based on this design perspective, some systems for authoring video / sound information have been developed based on

Human-Computer Interaction studies [3, 17, 22].They have been mainly designed for supporting the processof authoring video and sound information.

Knowledge Creation Perspective

Most of authoring tools assume that users know whichinformation pieces they are going to use and how to handlethe archives. Such archives are usually stored and retrievedthrough a normal file system. Nonaka et al. [11] have provided a new perspective in knowledge management thatchanged the concern from knowledge accumulation toknowledge creation. It is necessary to provide practicalmethods for knowledge creation, in addition to existingarchiving technologies.They also concluded through their case studies thatknowledge is embedded in human practices and should bestructured dynamically in accordance with the context of human practices. Dourish [5] has discussed that context isnot something that describes a setting a priori, but is anoccasional property relevant to particular settings, particular instances of action, and particular parties to that action.As Hori [8] has claimed, a useful structure of information pieces in one context is no more than one section of a phenomenon, and the structure does not work in another context any more. Therefore, the process of knowledgecreation is inevitably dynamic and cyclic. As the number of information pieces increases, it becomes indispensable to provide a supporting system for managing them.The Knowledge Liquidization & Crystallization (KLC) is amodel of the process of knowledge creation developed based on this dynamic aspect of knowledge. In the nextsection, we are going to explain the KLC and a systemKnowledge Nebula Crystallizer that supports the KLC.

KNOWLEDGE LIQUIDIZATION & CRYSTALLIZATIONAND KNOWLEDGE NEBULA CRYSTALLIZER

Suppose you are writing a paper, say, to submit to aconference. You refer to a number of books, papers, etc.,and your memory in your mind. You do not use suchexternal and internal information pieces as they are, but youexcerpt some relevant potions of information to your current writing and fuse them into an idea. This is the process of knowledge creation in practice that KLCdescribes. This process is usually conducted in a designer'smind. Figure 1 shows the process of knowledge creation.

Externalisation tools such as pens, papers help this processthat few digital archive system has focused on. From the perspective of knowledge creation, managing archive process cannot be separate from authoring process. Inaddition, static papers are not suitable for time-basedinformation that changes along with time dynamically.Properly designed tool is necessary.“Knowledge Nebula Crystallizer (KNC)” has beenoriginally suggested by Hori et al. [9] as a prototypeknowledge management system which has a repositorycalled “knowledge nebula”. The knowledge nebula is anunstructured collection of small information pieces.Essential operations of the KNC are crystallization andliquidization. During the crystallization, information piecesfrom the nebula are selected and structured according to a particular context, resulting in a new information artefact.During the liquidization, an information artefact is chunkedinto elements that are added to the knowledge nebula.

Figure 1 The process of knowledge creation

Figure 2

shows the process of knowledge creation supported by the KNC.

Figure 2 The process of knowledge creation with the KNC

This process is regarded as a co-authoring process:

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Some information pieces are available in advance, theKNC liquidises them (1)

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A designer presents an information artefact, such askeywords, a piece of music / video, a paper thathe/she wrote in the past (2)

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While the designers are interacting with theinformation artefact, the KNC reads both theinformation artefact and the interaction and providessome possible forms of knowledge crystallization asstimulants again (3)

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Through browsing / analysing the presentedcandidates (4), the designer crystallizes his/her knowledge for improving the information artefact (5)

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Repeat (2) – (5)

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Store the piece for reuse (6)When the designer completes the information artefact,he/she puts it into the KNC and the KNC liquidizes it intothe knowledge nebula again (6).The KNC is composed of mainly two components:Dynamic Concept Base (DCB); and interface part. As theinterface part differs from application to application, we aregoing to describe it with a specific implementation. In thenext section, the Dynamic Concept Base is described.

Dynamic Concept Base

“Dynamic Concept Base (DCB)” is a component that:

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Dissolves information pieces (KnowledgeLiquidization)

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Restructure the relationships among the information pieces (Knowledge Crystallization)

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Dynamically defines similarities among information pieces in knowledge nebula along with interactionsUsually a concept base is a matrix that defines thesimilarities among keywords in a certain set of documents.

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The similarities are modified dynamically throughinteractions between a designer and the KNC in order to provide users with proper forms of knowledgecrystallization to the design context.

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The DCB preserves plural matrices of similarities because similarities among information pieces are notstable and changes along with context [10]. It isexpected to be reusable in a similar context to thecontext where the DCB is defined.The reconfiguration of system’s behaviour has to beconducted through interactions because it is interaction thatconveys semantics to the determination of contextuality of particular settings and instances of action. Users’modifications should be seamlessly integrated withconventional use.

KNOWLEDGE NEBULA CRYSTALLIZER FOR TIME-BASED INFORMATION

In this research, non-verbal time-based information is takeninto consideration for supporting composition processes of video clips, musical pieces, based on the previous works of the author [2, 3].There are at least two time axes in authoring time-basedinformation: the time axis of an information artefact, andthat of designing the information artefact. For example,most of existing musical editors provide users with score-metaphor representation and such functions as replay, fastforward, etc. However, musical composition processes doesnot always proceed along with the time axis of composed piece

. Traditional musical editors provide users with arepresentation and interaction based on the time axis of a piece being composed with which sometimes restrictsusers’ design processes to proceed along [3]. In this paper,such information pieces are denoted as “objects”. Thesystem is composed of Dynamic Concept Base (DCB),OverviewEditor, DetailEditor, and ElementEditor.Figure 3 shows the system overview.

Figure 3 System overview

We have adopted spatial representation for presentingobjects because:

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It releases a user from the time axis of a piece beingcomposed [3]

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It provides gestalt [3, 16]

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It is suitable for incremental formalization [18] whichis required in the early phases of a design problem

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It provides users with flexible and multi dimensionalviewpoints

In this research, “musical composition” refers to the process that includes detailing a piece. Improvisational processes are excluded

Functions of Components & Usage Scenario

OverviewEditor provides, as it says, the overview of theobjects available at hand.First of all, a user inputs objects as seeds for crystallization by drag & drop into the OverviewEditor (Figure 3 (1)).Then the KNC retrieves stored objects on demand (Figure 3(2)), and arranges them along with their similarities to theinput object. The positions of the retrieved pieces arecalculated with Multi Dimensional Scaling method (MDS)[4], based on their physical similarities. It facilitates a user to understand the relationships among the objects [19].The more the number of objects increases, the moredifficult to grab the relationships on the physically limiteddisplay. That leads us to adopt the method of dynamicquery [1] in order for the user to adjust the amount of visible objects. The slide bar shown in the top edge of theOverviewEditor in Figure 3 allows the user to control thecriterion of similarity for displaying the retrieved pieces.The arrangement, however, is conducted by the system,which does not necessarily fit to the desired one of the user.So the system allows end-user modification [6] for incremental formalisation of information artefacts [18].The available interactions are:

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Rearrange the positions of the objects: In order toallow the user to formalize the relationships amonginformation incrementally.

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Grouping (Figure 3 (3)): This provides detailed-editing environment named. Grouped pieces areregarded as “relevant” and this interactionreconfigures the DCB in the background. While anobject is unique in the OverviewEditor, it can exist inmultiple DetailEditor because one object can be usedin different contexts.

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Attaching comments: The words in the comments aredefined as “relevant” and it defines the relationship between a word and pieces, and vice versa. They arealso used for normal keyword search.The DCB is reconfigured through interactions to arrangeobjects in a more suitable way for a design context (Figure3 (4)).In the DetailEditor, the horizontal axis is a time line andvertical axis is similar to tracks. Vertically overlappedobjects are played simultaneously. When two objects arehorizontally overlapped, available transition effects areindicated with the technique of Side Views [20]. A user canselect one of them to apply the effect. Objects grouped intoa DetailEditor is regarded as an information piece and is played from right to left in the ElementEditor described inthe next section.The ElementEditor provides functions that ordinarycommercial editors provide such as playing a selected