Lack of Intuitiveness in Logos
I provided here
https://community.logos.com/forums/p/143686/904735.aspx#904735
an example where I found intuitiveness lacking.
Here is another one:
I want to find out where the presence of God is mentioned in the Bible. When I do a Bible Search with all Bible text, in All Passages, In all Bibles, Logos provides the search suggestion <Topic Presence of God>. Using this suggestion, I get no results. Based on the recommendation of a Logos employee in my previous posting listed above, I decided to try a Basic search, searching Everything. Again, Logos suggests <Topic Presence of God>. Again, I get no results.
By chance, I noticed the Bible Browser. There I get 2,049 results when selecting "Topic: God: Presence".
I find that Logos has great tagging and great possibilities. However, the results that the different tools display are just random. How can I know that for this particular search, I need to use the Bible Browser, not a Bible search nor a Library search? I spend a lot of time trying out different tools in Logos in the hope one of them will give me the results I want.
The intuitiveness of Logos really needs to improve.
Comments
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Isn't "intuitive" in the mind of the user?
I normally work on a PC, but this month I'm using a borrowed Mac. Mac users will laugh out loud when I say that its non-intuitive operation is driving me crazy. I imagine the opposite would be true if the situation were reversed.
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Armin said:
I provided here
https://community.logos.com/forums/p/143686/904735.aspx#904735
an example where I found intuitiveness lacking.
I created a bug thread from this discussion.
Armin said:I decided to try a Basic search, searching Everything. Again, Logos suggests <Topic Presence of God>. Again, I get no results.
Any <Topic...> Search suggestion is misleading.
Armin said:By chance, I noticed the Bible Browser. There I get 2,049 results when selecting "Topic: God: Presence".
Which again illustrates the overuse of Topic. It actually comes from a Preaching Theme ---> search the Bible for {Section <PreachingTheme God: Presence>}.
Armin said:How can I know that for this particular search, I need to use the Bible Browser, not a Bible search nor a Library search?
Faithlife need to fix their <Topic> Search suggestion to avoid confusion. If you follow another Logos/Faithlife employee's suggestion to check "Match Equivalent references" in the Search menu you will also get no results.
Factbook is more productive using the same Topic "Presence of God" and has useful Search & Guide suggestions under Cultural Concepts and See Also. And Bible Browser gets it results from another Search. I would suggest you use both these Tools if Search gets no results.
Note: I got the Preaching Theme search from one of the results in Bible Browser. I selected a phrase in my bible and looked for suggestions on the RHS of the Context menu.
Dave
===Windows 11 & Android 13
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Jack Hairston said:
Isn't "intuitive" in the mind of the user?
Jack, you are absolutely right. And this is what makes building intuitive software so difficult.
Having said this, dictionary.com provides the following definitions:
to search: to go or look through (a place, area, etc.) carefully in order to find something missing or lost
to browse: to look through or glance at casually or randomly
In the context of Logos, it means: If you want to find something in the Bible using Logos, don't look for it carefully. You won't find anything. Instead, casually or randomly browse the Bible and you will find what you are looking for.
To me, this is counter-intuitive.
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Armin said:
In the context of Logos, it means: If you want to find something in the Bible using Logos, don't look for it carefully. You won't find anything. Instead, casually or randomly browse the Bible and you will find what you are looking for.
Although the faceted search in Bible Browser hides the exact types of searches it performs, and the UI is more casual than the search box, it doesn't mean that the Bible Browser (user) is not carefully looking for something.
If we knew which terms to use to construct the same search as the Bible Browser, we should be able to carefully replicate its results through the search box.
I think "intuitive" would mean that users would know which terms (Topic, Thing, PreachingTerm, etc.), types of search (Basic, Bible, etc.), and/or options (Match Equivalent or not, etc.) should be used to produce the results they are looking for. Since the majority of us probably don't know how to get the results we want (or have confidence to know that the results we get are correct), it doesn't seem intuitive.
Thanks to FL for including Carta and a Hebrew audio bible in Logos 9!
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PetahChristian said:
I think "intuitive" would mean that users would know which terms (Topic, Thing, PreachingTerm, etc.), types of search (Basic, Bible, etc.), and/or options (Match Equivalent or not, etc.) should be used to produce the results they are looking for. Since the majority of us probably don't know how to get the results we want (or have confidence to know that the results we get are correct), it doesn't seem intuitive.
Concur searching is not intuitively obvious to the casual observer. Helpful for Faithlife developers is description of what feels weird, which is not intuitive.
Looking forward to search suggestion improvement plus dreaming of option to turn off automated assistant (that personally has been more of an annoyance than helpful). Related to "intuitive" is experience (can include trial and error) doing many searches. Thankful for many friendly forum discussions: have learned a lot plus have a lot to learn. Logos and Verbum have powerful search engines, which have learning opportunities.
One search tip is having Bible verse(s) that should be included in results. For example, right click in Genesis 3:9 includes Cultural Concept:
{Section <Culture Presence of the Lord>}
Thankful for Fuzzy Bible Search in Oct 2016 => New Feature: Fuzzy Bible Search albeit initially puzzled by section in Everything search. Searching for a phrase:
"God helps those who help themselves"
shows Everything search finding relevant results in Library:
Jack Hairston said:I normally work on a PC, but this month I'm using a borrowed Mac. Mac users will laugh out loud when I say that its non-intuitive operation is driving me crazy. I imagine the opposite would be true if the situation were reversed.
An ongoing result of a look and feel lawsuit => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation is Microsoft choosing different interactions than Mac: e.g. Start button in lower left corner while Apple menu is upper left corner. Mac keyboard shortcut for cut, copy, and paste is easy to type; Windows uses Ctrl instead of Mac's Command (Windows key was added years later). Logos wiki => Keyboard Shortcuts For Mac that has a screen shot with Command key circled. Windows keyboard shortcut for print screen is easier than Mac; Logos wiki => Screenshot
Preview application on Mac is poorly named since Preview can adjust color and size of images plus annotate PDF's.
Installing Logos (or Verbum) on Windows needs a setup program to run. In contrast, Mac convention is opening disk image (dmg) followed by dragging application to desired folder: e.g. Applications. Conversely, uninstall on Windows uses an uninstaller while Mac convention is dragging application to trash.
Logos and Verbum have their own user interface, which is neither Windows nor Mac while being fairly consistent on both platforms.
Keep Smiling [:)]
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One search tip is having Bible verse(s) that should be included in results. For example, right click in Genesis 3:9 includes Cultural Concept:
{Section <Culture Presence of the Lord>}
Thanks, KS4J, for this hint.
However, it again illustrates the lack of intuitiveness.
For me, if somebody asked me what I want to look for in this case, I would say: I want to find out more about the topic "Presence of God".
Based on KS4J's suggestion for finding the best search syntax, I have the following comments:
- "Presence of the Lord": This sounds reasonable. I would assume that "Lord" is the same (or a subset of) "God".
- Culture: Dictionary.com defines Culture as "The sum of attitudes, customs, and beliefs that distinguishes one group of people from another." Or the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as: "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time" Using the term "Culture" in this search is a bit surprising, as I would not have thought that the "Presence of the Lord" is something that is primarily culture dependent. Is the "Presence of the Lord" different in the US than in the UK because they have different cultures?
- Section: Since Logos is an electronic library, I assume the most appropriate definition of "Section" is: "a distinct part or subdivision of a writing, as of a newspaper, legalcode, chapter, etc." Not sure how this is related to the "Presence of the Lord". Maybe if I wanted to search for the "Presence of the Lord" in a certain "section" of the Bible, but this does not seem to be the use of "Section" in the search syntax.
In short: This is another example of a mysterious search in Logos. No matter how long I try to understand the search syntax, it is just puzzling.
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WIthout disputing that we can do more to help users understand and use Logos' extensive search capabilities, i can clarify a bit:
- "Culture" here means using data from the Cultural Concepts dataset, which describes the cultural context of the ancient world, including both the Bible and related secondary literature. Understanding the Bible correctly absolutely requires understanding biblical culture, which is often substantially different from our modern culture. See Lexham Cultural Ontology: Dataset Documentation for more about this dataset.
- "Section" is used because we annotated cultural concepts on sections of the text (not individual words or verses): for example, the first instance in the biblical text of "Presence of the Lord" as a cultural concept is Gen 3:8-10.
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Dear Sean,
Many thanks for taking the time to reply. And thanks for acknowledging that the search in Logos is still work in progress. I appreciate the extensive effort it takes to provide the underlying datasets and tags, which are the foundation for any search capabilities. You have done extensive work in this area. Many thanks.
You have also done a great job in classifying the underlying data into meaningful structures and ontologies. This is another very difficult challenge.
To me, it looks like you have the fundamentals in place. However, currently, the searches are implemented with the underlying ontology in mind, not the user. I as end user, don't really care what ontology or structure you use, or in which dataset certain information is stored. A really intuitive tool hides its structure from the user. But to implement this is very difficult. I hope that you succeed with it. If / when you do, Logos will be amazing.
Armin
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