Software tends to grow in complexity as time goes on, with more features being added as more needs arise. This can be problematic especially for consumer software intended to be used by a wide array of people, where they can’t figure out how they need to do the specific thing they need to do just once because of the vast number of options arrayed before them. DiscoverySpace is proffered as a solution to this problem specifically for Photoshop, by allowing users to browse crowd sourced pre-built actions to apply on their image. They create an additional panel and ask the user to enter the kind of image they have. DiscoverySpace does keyword matching in order to identify the most suitable collection of actions to suggest, returning a random sample mix of results to promote discoverability of new Photoshop features by the user. They conduct a couple of studies, first examining how novices interact with the vanilla software with experts guiding them and showing them what they can do. And another study where they compare the usage of Photoshop by novices with and without the presence of DiscoverySpace. They find that having DiscoverySpace as a feature greatly helps novices in performing their tasks and they don’t struggle as much, but also find that it is limiting because DiscoverySpace only applies effects on the whole image.
I feel like a really good expansion of this work can be to have an additional window pop up after an action has been done with various tweakable parameters specific to that action. This feels like it could really promote the Photoshop’s plugin ecosystem and make it more accessible for ordinary folks to contribute to plugins, not just companies that specialize in it. Another idea in this paper that I find interesting is the use of random sampling to find and suggest actions. I think this is genius because it promotes curiosity in the user about the different things that Photoshop can offer and slowly, over time, allow the user to become more familiar with all the features particularly if they are curious and look through the History panel to see what effects were applied when they clicked on a DiscoverySpace action. It can serve as a useful learning tool that will allow those who prefer to work with practical examples to learn how different things work and emergently get an idea of how Photoshop as a whole functions.
- Would you find this a useful learning tool or do you only see it as something that is used to just immediately serve your purpose?
- What other software would something like this be useful?
- Is the random sampling they do to promote discoverability a good idea? Would their purpose be better served by optimizing suggestions solely for the specific task at hand?
Hi Subil,
To answer your last question, I actually had a different opinion when it came to random sampling. I thought it was weird. Editing photos requires some steps to be in a certain order and having the random action suggestions might result in some lower quality edits. If the users were using this purely for learning about the interface, then it’s acceptable but otherwise I would recommend optimizing suggestions solely for the specific task at hand.
Great reflection! However, I was thinking about your suggestion of having a pop-up. I personally do not think a pop-up would be a good idea as it may interrupt the user’s current process and switch from being helpful to being annoying very easily. Although, it would be interesting to see how it impacts the user’s creativity.