Workbench Design
The goal of this workbench design is to provide maximum flexibility in the selection and reuse of components with maximum support and encouragement for the novice user. The main canvas space contains tool sets that each consists of all the tools necessary to accomplish a particular task. So, for example, the FeatureLens stack will contain all the components of FeatureLens. The Nora stack will contain all the components necessary to do supervised classification. The network-graphing stack holds all the tools required to perform a social network analysis of a text and visualize the results. Each tool set has a unique and distinctive visual reference to the primary analytic to that tool set. To launch a tool set the user would drag it into the socket named "drag n'drop a tool set to start".
We also wanted to support expert users who wanted to construct new tool sets as well as modify existing ones. To make that possible there is a "new tool set" option on the left that would be launched like any other tool set. There is also a complete list of all tools, grouped by type, across the bottom of the screen. Johnny and Matt B. have been working on a set of nuanced animations that will help take the celibacy out of Monk.
Our next steps will involve looking further into the design of what happens after you drop a tool set into "drag n'drop a tool set to start". Our plan is to lay the tools out in their sequential order. Then we'll work further on the look of the individual tools when they're opened.
