December 24 th , 2004 1 Direct Combination: supporting diverse viewpoints and dynamic personalisation Simon Holland Computing Department, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom S.Holland@open.ac.uk Abstract This paper assumes the reader has read TR2002/1. 1 Supporting diverse viewpoints and dynamic personalisation When Direct Combination is applied in mobile and ubiquitous settings, it affords some interesting new opportunities for users and designers. One such opportunity is to support diverse viewpoints (other possible terms might include alternative worldviews, alternative perspective, dynamic personalisation and divergent ontologies). When designing Direct Combination systems, there is flexibility in deciding precisely what set of operations should apply to what collection of selected objects. This flexibility, far from being a drawback, can be positively exploited to offer new kinds of dynamic personalisation and support for diverse viewpoints, by means we describe in this paper. One of the key aims of Direct Combination is to reduce search. In everyday life, it is a common experience to choose between diverse viewpoints as a means of reducing search. For example, people often choose newspapers or magazines that reflect more or less well- known viewpoints, with the effect of reducing the search required to find relevant information. In the case of Direct Combination, recall that in order to afford unfamiliar commands, a user may zap zero or more items, and then select or modify a command from the choices presented. This set of steps presents a surprising number of simple opportunities, if desired, for the user to benefit from choose amongst viewpoints. Such choice can have the effect of focussing even more tightly the already reduced search space afforded by Direct Combination. In order to understand where these opportunities to express viewpoints arise, we will itemise the points in a Direct Combination interaction at which a user could choose to express a viewpoint without undue burden on the simplicity of the interaction. 1.1 Competing views of object identity. People sometimes hold differing views on the identity of an object, or its class, or even whether a particular object exists or not, and where the boundaries between one object and the next object lie. Such different viewpoints are commonplace among, for example, different social, religious, national and professional groups, and among those playing different temporary work roles. For example a firefighter, a policeman, a paramedic, a tourist, a child, and people of different religions might identify the same object in quite different ways - as a potential fire-risk, a possible security breach, a health risk, a tourist attraction, a toy or as a religiously significant item.