Thursday, March 18th, 1999

Storyboard Presentation Notes from Class

Tom Reagan:
- Studies on [unreadable word] - can you back up this claim?
- Can we get jcn a girlfriend and complete the project on time
- What happens if we don't log out? What about a slow connection?
- How will Dr. Goodwin access the statistics?
- Will Britney Spears be available for physicals?

Answers to Tom's Points:
- Well, we hope that we can back up all of the claims in the course of the project. we have clearly defined goals and a solid methodology - so, we will see.
- No, no chance at getting jcn a girl and finishing the project. Sorry, jcn.
- We answered this in class... ben/adam?
< - no, we declined to invited Miss. Spears because of time considerations.



Matt Berland:
 - jokes pretty weak (grin)
- How are you doing the question answer stuff? Simple Parsing? Keyword Matching?
- It might be better to pop up Dr. Goodwin's ideal quetion that was matched for the query (2 reasons) ... first, people will know what question "roger" is responding too... incase keyword matching goes wackey! ... second, people will see what Dr. Goodwin would have asked in that situation.
- When you produce the actual diagnosis, you should probably show the questions and tests that the user should have asked to get there.
- You might have some problems judging the value of a keyword match query unless you weight uncommon (read: Medical) words. Are you using Log-Likelihood? Surprise?

Answers to Matt's Points:
- um, thanks. - we will post a more detailed desc. of the q/a section... there we will address your points. - oh, and thanks for the idea about the "optimal" route to the diagnosis... pretty good!



Annonymous:

This project is too big for the time frame... may the schwartz be with you.

Umm, like thanks or something.


Mark Zeldis:

- What if the user types a question that the computer doesn't understand? do you have it rephrased? or just tarket it, make up some answers?
- Is the user required to give an explaination for their diagnosis? For example, is it possible for the user to give a correct diagnosis accidently? How can you handle this?
- Are you keeping track of the step by step decisions the user makes?
- Thanks. Good job and good luck!

Answers to Mark's points:
- The computer will prompt the user to rephrase the question (a la "I didn't understand your question please ask it again a different way")
- No, the user is not required by the program. I would imagine that Dr. Goodwin could assign a rationalle requirement if she wanted to. Further, ...
- We are keeping track of the step-by-step decisions (via a time/date stamp) - so she can see if the diagnosis was possible given the information the student was given.
- Thanks! on your project as well

We think this is Jesse K...:

- Patient ++ a stoopid name.
- Where is Britney? Britney would motivate...
- Allow user to see their Q/A history, incase the user is forgetful and dumb. (ditto w/ test results)
- "Baby eat" = "Baby has cancer"

Answers to jdk's points:
- Thanks... feel free to suggest some alternative names
- Britney had a film screening in Africa and was unable to attend the storyboard presentation... she should be here for the final presentations, though.
- Um,.... i guess we could do that.
- What? Who are you?



Another person w/o a face, perhaps Darkman (??):

- Asking students who have used the old programs might also be helpful.
- Interface is good (esp. the buttons at the bottom)... but a little dry overall.
- Natural language issues?
- I like the font... maybe make the layout softer?

Answers to Darkman's points:
- Um... that is a really good suggestion. thanks.
- Thanks... we will try to spice up the interface when we do more with it.
- Um, go to Ben's future discussion on Q/A... we can post more on this later.
- Thanks, it is Myriad Roman.


Saori's Questions:

- Who is hosting the program?
- Documentation for maintanence? (crucial b/c Dr. Goodwin will be adding to it, etc).
- How fast will the answers be "spit back at"?
- The options tool bar is difficult to see... orange in yellow is hard to read.
- How much of the dbase has already been set up?

Answers to Saori's points:
- during the development stage bsa.brown.edu... rbb is hoping to get stg to host the final project.
- Um... good point - maybe we should talk about this at somepoint (?).
- Again - when we figure out more about the q/a system - we will post something.
- Orange and yellow... hmmm...what are your favorite colors?
- Dbase not set up yet. Although parts of it can be taken from stuff we (jcn/benagarr) have written previously.



Another non-name person's Questions:

I like the idea of the dr being able to enter new cases, but in terms of the exam portion of the program, how will you handel her entering all this information (images, results, etc).

Is there any way to judge if the user is asking "good" questions rather than questions that get answers from the computer parser? -- Oliver asked this in class. i think a good point here is that this program from an educational standpoint cannot replace actors; but can only be a supplement. Another way to approach this problem is to tell the user the question as it is worded in the dbase as supplementary to the answer. This helps issue of the AI failing or doctors not wording their questions well.

Answers to ?'s points:
Um... we hope to have a html interface to the back end stuff... see saori's point on documentation - we obviously will have to delineate this part in detail.
- Um... yes, see Matt's questions above - we will consider that.



Thanks for your points!

The Patient ++ team.