Disnertation Hell

I am now officially in dissertation HELL. Everyone told me it would happen, and I kinda believed them. I wasn't expecting it to be this miserable. It isn't that I don't love my topic, cause I do. I consider myself so incredibly fortunate to be able to research something I feel so strongly about. Nevertheless, I am in this terrible hole that no one else can get me out of and it is painful! I have read so much literature on the topic that my head is spinning. At this point I am attempting to distill each publication down to a few key points that mesh with my topic. The literature is vast, yet there has been so little research done that is closely related to my topic.

Ok, you ask, what is my topic? I am going to look at image use across several groups of users in order to inform system design. The most thoroughly reasearched area surrounding this topic is the type of terms that are used to retrieve images. While image descriptors (cataloging, indexing, etc.) are critical for their retrieval from an image system, it isn't the complete picture. From my literature review it seems as if researchers are starting with the images or the system and then users are introduced into the study. I would like to begin with the users and discover how and why they use images, how they go about looking for images and the decision-making processes they use in selecting their images. My hunch is that the various groups I will look at (which are all fairly closely related) are unique, each in their own way and that these differences need to be accomodated in the system's design. Further areas to be examinded are possible tools that could be developed to enable (new) modes of analysis for these users.

Alright, now that I have become motivated I suppose I need to go back to the annotated bib for another 40 pages or so of distillation of ideas. Will write again real soon!