Scoping of Well-Field Grid View - Round 1

[gusferguson]

There have been user requests to be able to view all the Fields in a Well as a grid.

This is partly because, increasingly, non-HCS data is being placed into Plate formats to aid with analysis etc. This leads to there often being different numbers of Fields per Well. The same can happen with Plate data when unwanted images are discarded to save space.

Requirements:

• be able to view all the Fields in a Well as images in a grid
• be able to set the number of images per row in the grid so the images “wrap” as there can be 10s/100s of Fields per Well.

Additional requirements:

• good opportunity to look at increasing the granularity of annotations on Screen-Run-Well-Field
• when in grid view could be able to annotate individual/multiple selection/all Fields in the Well - i.e. at an Image level
• an icon to show when a Well has no Fields (Image) - e.g. when Wells in a Plate do not all have same number of Fields or when there is an image missing for a Field/Well.

Current Status

Insight:

If Plate has Wells with > 1 Field:

• button for grid view and drop-down menu to select Field number shown in toolbar
• selection of grid button gives drop-down with options:
• “Spatial”
• “As a row”
• currently neither of these options show any data in the middle pane (Preview shows data exists)
• Field # drop-down shows the number of Fields in the selected Well
• which may be different for each Well
• selection of that Field shows same # Field for all Wells in the Plate
• if there is no such Field in a Well then the Well appears black - no indication that there is no image to display - which can be confusing.

Web:

All Plates:

• drop-down menu to select Field number shown in toolbar - even if only 1 Field per Well.

Issues:

Insight:

• visibility of the grid functionality is poor
• “Spatial” - not displaying data and not clear what “spatial” is.
• “As a row” - not displaying data and no way to adjust number of Fields per row
• no indication when there is no image to display for a particular Field.

Note: J-M: The grid view used to work nicely, recent changes in call might have introduced a bug. Preview was not in place when the feature was introduced and was overlooked. The concept of preview might have to be revisited (not now) for wells with multiple fields

Web:

• label for Field # drop-down is “Index” - not informative.

Both:

• Insight-Web inconsistency
• toolbar content and layout
• Insight has zooming of Plate thumbnails - no thumbnail zoom available for Web
• Insight has individual Wells labelled with column and row numbers - Web only has labels for column and row headers (? has implications for when displaying Fields in grid).

Note: J-M: The label is stored in the DB, so that needs to be taken into account.

Insight

Web

Mockups

Points:

• to improve the visibility of the Fields and grid functionality I think the items in the toolbar should be displayed all the time and just greyed out when there is only one Field in the run.

No more than one Field in any Well:

? if Field # drop-down should have a label: “Select:”

An annotation in this context would be linked to the Well - A1

Insight

Web

When any Well has > one Field:

View Fields As Grid selected when Well A1 selected:

• 8 Fields in Well
• No. in Row = 5

An annotation in this context would be linked to the Field - Field no. 1. Multi-selection of fields and batch annotation would be possible.

Note: Thumbnail zoom control shown in web

View Fields As Grid selected when Well A1 selected:

• 25 Fields in Well

• No. in Row = 7
• zoomed in

When Run selected but no individual Well selected

Fields in Wells separated by bar with label for context.

Note: Would probably need pagination.

An annotation in this context would be linked to the Field - Field #x. Multi-selection of fields across wells and batch annotation would be possible.

Drop-down for No. of Fields per row:

Probably practical to give options up to 10 and then “All”. (Web same as insight)

Icon to indicate no Image - i.e. Well has no image for that Field #

Option 1 - black BG with 50% transparent “/” across standard Image icon.

Option 2 - centre pane BG colour with 50% transparent “/” across standard image icon.

Can tweak length of / etc.

Comments and feedback welcome.

[pwalczysko]

I like the white icon for "no image" better.

[will-moore]

I don't understand why we need a "Drop-down for No. of Fields per row". We used to provide something like that for images in a Dataset in Insight, but you don't need it for wrapping many images into a view. The wrapping just happens "naturally", and the number of images per row simply depends on the size of the images and the available space, both of which the user can adjust.

[will-moore]

We already have the ability to annotate at the Image level: When the appropriate field is chosen and the Well selected, the Well/Image is shown in the right, but all annotations there are on the Image. What we don't support is the reduced granularity of being able to annotate the Well, which is often what users want.

[jburel]

As suggested on the initial doc, we should have a text field to enter the number of elements per row not a drop down selection. @will-moore: We cannot use the same strategy that the one used to display dataset i.e. size of viewport since the display has to correspond to a specific grid layout e.g. 5X4 (discussed with users) for power of 2 number, this is easy otherwise we can use the viewport to have a "default" number of columns but the user needs to be able to change it.

[jburel]

Currently images are annotated not well samples, (that's what we opted to do since a well sample is just an image with location) Well annotation is missing from the clients i.e. cannot annotate wells

[gusferguson]

@jburel

As suggested on the initial doc, we should have a text field to enter the number of elements per row not a drop down selection.

Agree we need to be able to specify. The advantage of the drop-down is the it gives the "All" option - which I think people will want if they have unpredictable/inconsistent numbers of fields in wells. As a whole drop-downs are much more user friendly - all mouse: click - select - release vs. text box requires mouse and keyboard: click - type - return

[jburel]

What does "all" mean?

[gusferguson]

No wrapping.

[will-moore]

Not sure about drop-downs being user-friendly. E.g. http://www.formisimo.com/blog/why-are-drop-downs-and-select-boxes-bad-for-forms/ and http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1950 A text field that is empty would not cause any wrapping (equivalent of "All") and this should be the default.

[manics]

What we don't support is the reduced granularity of being able to annotate the Well, which is often what users want.

Logically this is where annotations related to the sample such as experimental parameters belongs, since the whole well is treated.

[gusferguson]

@will-moore - both of those articles are in the context of forms and both cite the most problems with mobile devices - neither applicable in this case. Besides they are just opinion blog posts.

[jburel]

@gusferguson: we need wrapping and 10 will not be enough when we have a large number of values e.g. 700 fields. This will be difficult to "predict" if we use a drop-down That's why we use(d) in insight a text box in order to set the desire number (dataset view)

[will-moore]

My impression from multiple places (not just opinion blog posts) is that "select" is not user friendly: This is a good one: https://youtu.be/CUkMCQR4TpY?t=12m3s.

[gusferguson]

Mockups of text box replacing selection box.

Insight:

Web:

[will-moore]

Here's a mock-up of browsing Plate/Run -> Well (show few thumbs as preview) -> Show All (grid) -> Select image (loads in right panel). You can adjust how much the centre pane is split top/bottom depending on how big you want to show the plate vv fields, but the plate view always stays in the same location.