Hello world,

This is Manifold team. Thank you for helping testing our app in this year’s Cosyne meeting.

Manifold is a prototype conference navigator to improve your conference experience by (machine) learning your preferences and suggesting posters and talks that might be more relevant to you. IT DOES NOT AIM TO REPLACE the current Cosyne app, but rather serve as an experiment for us, to see if we can use your choices and preferences in an automated fashion to suggest new posters you may otherwise miss out on.

In order to install Manifold, please install the app “Testflight” (Apple’s beta testing platform) on your phone. Soon you will receive an invitation from testflight, or from App Store Connect. Please follow the instructions, and open the invitation link, prompting Testflight to start the installation of Manifold in your phone.

If you have any questions please email: tim.vogels@cncb.ox.ac.uk or victor.hernandez-urbina@cncb.ox.ac.uk.

Once you install the app and create an account, it’s easy to use. Click “Recommendations” and start selecting interesting abstracts by swiping right. Anything you like will be saved in your personal programme. As you interact with the app, Manifold will learn your preferences, and (hopefully) offer recommendations accordingly. Manifold will store and organise your programme, publish it in the newsfeed where you can take a sneak peek of what others find interesting (if you want to), or email it directly. Finally, you can also use Manifold to “populate” your programme with additional abstracts, by hitting the “populate” link to add 5 suggested abstracts that fit with your profile. You can populate your programme with additional 5 items again and again. We would like to hear from you whether you think the app is successful in finding good posters for you.

Please notice that as of right now, you cannot refresh or delete your profile or ‘wipe’ your avatar (it makes it easier to track your progress for evaluating our algos). If you want to start out new, just create another user profile.

For a complete manual, you can also visit: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GP0cLskm9kpGNw16JGN01gPvt13BCtCG2ZuF-M6yCOY/edit?usp=sharing (and leave comments if you would like).

Lastly, please bear with us. Manifold is still at an early stage, so some of its features are still experimental, but your input is invaluable for us. If you want to use the conference programme Manifold creates for you, it is safest to send yourself an email periodically (by using the email option in the menu, (which only works with Apples’s email client)), just to be safe.

We would love to hear your thoughts and hope you enjoy the test ride,

Best,
Victor, Panos and Tim