1. Product-Generation in ESG: some explorations of the user experience Steve Hankin – March, 2007

2. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 2 The user is offered a choice … Search our holdings to find data of interest? No thanks. I know which data I want to work with. Continue Suppose the user elects to perform a search The user’s experience of ESG begins with the sign-on process. This story board picks up after that point …

3. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 3 ESG will offer a search interface through which the user can discover runs of interest. (This Story Board will not attempt to explore the ESG search experience. RDBMS and OWL/RDF options are being examined in a separate discussion.) User constrains the search

4. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 4 The result of a search is a list of “run-variables” (*) (*) A “run-variable” means a variable that is output by a model run. Even if the result of a search is simply a “model run”, that search result implicitly carries along with it a list of the output variables. User selects the run-variables of interest Preview Continue Preview reduced-resolution data Obtain or analyze data data Imagine a metadata summary of this experiment here … Experiment 2 The info icon leads to human- readable metadata Next we’ll run through a scenario for “preview mode” access to the data. Question: Do the benefits of a preview mode justify the added complexity?

5. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 5 ESG Portal – Preview reduced-resolution data Naviga- tion bar of some kind … Reduced resolution data for preview Experiment 2 – AAA Pre-industrial Experiment 4 – H&R winds Experiment 4

6. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 6 ESG Portal – Preview reduced-resolution data Naviga- tion bar of some kind … Reduced resolution data for preview Experiment 2 – AAA Pre-industrial Experiment 4 – H&R winds Temperature Salinity (no reduced resolution data available) Zonal velocity (no reduced resolution data available) Meridional velocity (no reduced resolution data available) User selects variable of interest A dimmed variable name indicates that no preview dataset is available

7. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 7 ESG Portal – Preview reduced-resolution data

8. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 8 Desktop:Matlab, IDL, IDV, Ferret, GrADS, … Custom subsets: netCDF,binary,spreadsheet, GIS layer, … Rapid Access to Reduced Resolution Information Products

9. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 9 Lets return to our search results -- the list of “run-variables”. Preview Continue Preview reduced-resolution data Obtain or analyze data data But this time we click on “Continue”

10. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 10 Experiment 2 – AAA Pre-industrial [+] Variables from Experiment 2 Experiment 4 – H&R winds [-] Temperature Naviga- tion bar of some kind … Preview time resolution Monthly On-line Off-line Preview 3-day 1-day Salinity Monthly 3-day Variables from Experiment 4 1-day ESG Portal – Select time periods of interest Year: 2000 Year: 2100 We enter a tool to help visualize all of the available data selected from the search – both offline and on-line User can zoom in on the time region of interest … Zoom

11. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 11 Experiment 2 – AAA Pre-industrial [+] Variables from Experiment 2 Experiment 4 – H&R winds [-] Temperature Naviga- tion bar of some kind … Preview time resolution Monthly On-line Off-line Preview 3-day 1-day Salinity Monthly 3-day Variables from Experiment 4 1-day ESG Portal – Select time periods of interest Year: 2060 Year: 2070 Zoom Continue Pick the variables and time resolutions he wants … And continue to his shopping basket

12. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 12 [+] Offline data [-] Naviga- tion bar of some kind … Online data ESG Portal – My Shopping Basket Experiment 4 Salinity 1-day 2060:2070 TapeToDisk Experiment 4 Temperature 3-day 2060:2070 Experiment 4 Temperature 1-day 2060:2070 Experiment 4 Salinity 3-day 2060:2070 Experiment 4 Temperature Preview 2000:2100 Continue My Shopping Basket Remove from shopping basket FTP raw files He can request migration of data from tape to disk (outside the scope of this Story Board) … Or he can continue into the product generation system As we will now do … He can FTP the raw files (also outside the scope of this Story Board) …

13. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 13 ESG Portal – Request visualizations and products Naviga- tion bar of some kind … My Shopping Basket All on-line data Experiment 2 Experiment 4 – H&R winds

14. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 14 ESG Portal – Request visualizations and products Naviga- tion bar of some kind … My Shopping Basket Experiment 4 – H&R winds Temperature 2000:2100 Preview 3-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 Salinity 2060:2070 1-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 All on-line data User selects data of interest Experiment 2

15. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 15 As before, user can select geometry, region, product and options …

16. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 16 Desktop:Matlab, IDL, IDV, Ferret, GrADS, … Custom subset: netCDF,binary,spreadsheet, GIS layer, … Information Products Continuing with a look at some of the subtler aspects of products …

17. Analysis capabilities Define a new variable by applying simple transformations (averaging, variance, extrema, …) Operation could be performed server-side or client-side …

18. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 18 Model Inter- comparison Compare fields When grids differ regridding is automated

19. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 19 Ensemble comparison Ensemble comparison is not just a viz style – it is a custom user interface “mode”

20. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 20 Demanding (large) products may be created in “batch” mode

21. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 21 On-the-fly regridding from curvilinear to rectilinear coordinates Another example of server-side analysis

22. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 22 Through OPeNDAP -- seamlessly segue from the browser to analysis in user’s favorite desktop tool

23. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 23 Server-side analysis available at the desktop, too The remote dataset is just an OPeNDAP URL http://server/my_output e.g. Vertical average of variable “TEMP” http://server/_expr_{my_output}{Tave=TEMP[Z=@AVE]} Define a new variable on-the-fly

24. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 24 Server-side analysis note: “Delayed evaluation” –Calculations are on-demand, “surgical” –So, despite the huge size of the data, to the user the whole domain appears to have been transformed

25. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 25 Query available data sets: Query variables in data set “model_1”: Query space-time domain: Request a subset of data as a netCDF file: e.g. Unix shell script access to products >lasls http://cpu/LAS >lasls http://cpu/LAS model_1 >lasls http://cpu/LAS model_1 sst >lasget -x 20:60 -y 20:60 -t 11-Dec-2000 -f netcdf http://cpu/LAS model_1 sst All ESG products (well, nearly) can also be made available through a service interface. In this example we show shell script access.

26. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 26 The service interface also opens the door for special purpose UIs This shows an example developed for K-12 students

27. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 27 Search our holdings to find data of interest? No thanks. I know which data I want to work with. Continue The returning user clicks here Returning, finally, to the starting point… Here is a scenario for the advanced user, who has just signed-on and wants to return to his work from an earlier session.

28. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 28 ESG Portal – Request visualizations and products Naviga- tion bar of some kind … My Shopping Basket Experiment 4 – H&R winds Temperature 2000:2100 Preview 3-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 Salinity 2060:2070 1-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 All on-line data open “all on- line data” User may return to previous work on his shopping basket Or …

29. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 29 ESG Portal – Request visualizations and products Naviga- tion bar of some kind … IPCC collection All on-line data IPCC collection NCAR GFDL My Shopping Basket IRI COLA BADC UK Met Office

30. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 30 ESG Portal – Request visualizations and products Naviga- tion bar of some kind … IPCC collection Temperature 2000:2100 Preview 3-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 Salinity 2060:2070 1-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 All on-line data My Shopping Basket GFDL My Shopping Basket IRI COLA BADC UK Met Office Experiment 1 Experiment 2 Experiment 3 Experiment 4 Experiment 5 Experiment 6 Experiment 7

31. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 31 ESG Portal – Request visualizations and products Naviga- tion bar of some kind … IPCC collection Preview 3-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 Salinity 2060:2070 1-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 All on-line data GFDL IRI COLA UK Met Office Experiment 1 Temperature Experiment 3 Experiment 4 Experiment 5 Experiment 6 Experiment 7 Salinity Zonal Velocity Meridional Velocity

32. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 32 ESG Portal – Request visualizations and products Naviga- tion bar of some kind … IPCC collection Preview 3-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 Salinity 2060:2070 1-day resolution Temperature 2060:2070 All on-line data Experiment 1 Temperature Experiment 3 Experiment 4 Experiment 5 Experiment 6 Experiment 7 Salinity Zonal Velocity Meridional Velocity Preview Monthly 3-day 1-day User selects an on-line aggregation of interest On-line Off-line Preview Temperature

33. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 33 Once again, he enters the product- generation system. And as before …

34. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 34 Desktop:Matlab, IDL, IDV, Ferret, GrADS, … Custom subset: netCDF,binary,spreadsheet, GIS layer, … Information Products

35. March 2007ESG Story Poard – product subsystem 35 Discussion time …