The user actions the very first incarnation of a Time Browser must support:
Recording Audio
Minimal effort for the user to record audio.
The initial recording should be tagged with speakers, to a high degree of accuracy, based on their primary recording or analysis
Interaction
The resulting event record will be presented as a text document with controls.
Query the record for an utterance or a response
How to choose what is presented on the screen – a search
In this scenario I expect the user to be able to query the system via voice. The results should be shown as a text document with deep interactions:
Show me everything Ed has said this month. This is the most basic query, show phrases based on a keyword. The time limitation is optional, it should be possible to also ask to see everything Ed has ever said into the system.
What did Lisa say about OHS this week? This is also a pretty basic query, show phrases based on a participant and a keyword.
What did Sam say in response to Stan about DKR? Results should be shown in the document as text, showing all text uttered by Sam after Ed was speaking and where one of them mentioned DKR.
Select text to interact with it and change the view
how to interact with what is on the screen
The primary view is that of a text document. The user should be able to select text and:
Press Space Bar (or something similar) to play back the recorded audio for that selection of text.
Ctrl-Click (or something similar) and on a participants name and choose:
• Show me only text from ‘name’
• Do not show me text from ‘name’
• Show me who most speaks before ‘name’
• Show me who most speaks after ‘name’
• & further queries along the same style…
Ctrl-Click (or something similar) and on any text and choose:
• Show only utterances with ‘keyword(s)’
• Show only utterances without ‘keyword(s)’
• Expand this section to show more of what was said before or after (either as a command or as an action somehow)
• Copy as Citation (copies this text with citation information to enter into any document, where the citation includes a link to the audio snippet of this text)
‘Liquid’ style interactions where the user can search based on any text, look up references, translate and so on.
Note: As the user continues this interaction, the amount of data on the screen changes, these are only view changes, but the views will be tracked so the views can be saved and shared:
Create ‘Saved Views’
views are as important as documents
The user will be able to apply control over what it shown and store this view and share it with others.
Share Real-Time Coded Documents
emergence of a new way to handle real-world time in documents
Another key feature is the ability to share a stream document and have the real-world time encoded so that anyone can open it and go to not just a specified amount of time in the record but to a specific real-world time, such as 2:37pm. This would entail matching real-world time to the record internal timecode and leaving it in the document itself, maybe in the EXIF data, though this should not stop the record to be opened in a regular media browser.
• User emails a document, which looks like a normal media document and someone who is not using any Time Browser software can still open it and play it as normal.
• User emails a document, which looks like a normal media document and someone who is using Time Browser software can point to specific real-world time in the player timeline.