Notes on User Interfaces based on Artificial Intelligence

The grid provides or at least at the moment promises a desing and user interface web technology that changes based on the average user pattern of a site. The usage is measured analysed by different artificial and data-mining algorithm and a new design a new, a new site structure is proposed automatically. 

As the idea seems pretty much science fictional for the first run but actually the idea itself is not so wild. Basically every search based user interface and application follows the same pattern. Certainly not only whole user interface is restructured, only a part and it is basically regarded to content as opposed to structure. As an example consider an news portal that automatically shows some information based on different sources and selection criteria. Despite the field is rather regarded as search than like data mining, the pattern is pretty much the same: 

 1. collect data

 2. analyse data

 3. show something different on the user interface.   

The two differences are : 

 a. The field is regarded as search and not data mining or artificial intelligence: well it does not seem to a be a huge difference. Basically most of the search and indexing algorithm show some similarity with data-mining. Actually the two fields were pretty much common a couple of years ago. 

 b. In search based applications, only small area of the user interface can be dynamically changed, like a search result or a filter result. However it is not necessarily a big different either, technically the whole user interface could be reconstructed. If it makes sense from an endure point of view is certainly a more difficult question.   

Notes on OOTB Software Products

It is pretty much interesting how different the meaning of the world Out Of the Box in IT. If we say "think out of the box" the meaning rather think extraordinary thinks special, think in a non-standard way. On the other had if one says out of the box software product, the meaning is not exactly the same, one might say it is a little bit contrary, it practical means a ready product that can be used without modification: "An out of the box feature or functionality (also called OOTB or off the shelf), particularly in software, is a feature or functionality of a product that works immediately after installation without any configuration or modification." - Source - Wikipedia

As the two meanings are different, it is always a question what exactly means if we use the world "out of the box" in different context for something else, like for a company for an idea for non-software product ... Does it mean something innovative or extraordinary, or does it mean something ready or ready to go ?

Even if we concentrate on the out of the box software products it is pretty much a question if it is possible to have a product really ready to go. Unfortunately most of our software products are pretty much complicated, in this sense apart from the most simplest software the others usually require an amount of customization, configuration and training activity. In this sense it is better to define the OOTB that you can get a ready product for a certain prize with let we say 10 - 20 - 30 percent customization, parametrisiation, installation, and training on top. It is certainly a question where is exactly the limit between an OOTB and a non-OOTB product ? 

Notes on digital trash

Notes, Blogs, Social media, LinkedIn, Xing, Facebook, Sharing, Liking, Information Sharing. There is a lot of information floating overall the globe, however it might make sense to ask the question : do we really need all of these pieces of information ? Do not we cause by chance just an unnecessary amount of information trash or information junk ? Similarly as the industrial revolution resulted a lot of physical trash, does the IT revolution result a lot informational trash ??

Notes on digital workplace and the visual models behind

There is an ongoing direction both from Microsoft in the direction of SharePoint and from other companies as well to speak about digital workplace. The question that is not hundred percent clear what does digital workplace exactly mean ? I mean I am pretty much sure that there is a lot of definition for that but from a practical point of view I would imagine a classical at least half digital workplace and I would imagine that digital version of that. So than basically the question is what is out model ?  Which workplace do we want to imagine as a digital workplace for the first run ?

Visual Model 1: Is our model something similar than bellow ? Than we speak about a software that supports digital documents, printing perhaps some extended functionalities like approving workflows and if we are very creative some digital brainstorming methods or electronic post-its.  

Figure 1. A workplace that can be imagined as digital.

Visual Model 2: Or is our model rather something bellow ? If so than the requirements are however much higher, than we speak about real time and high availability systems, mission critical system integration probably real time operation systems and basically everything that our state of the art IT can provide...

Figure 2. A workplace that can be imagined as digital.

WHAT IS OUR BASIC MODEL FOR DIGITAL WORKPLACE ?