I am not certain that to comment is useful, since what I have to say is outside what I perceive to be the focus of this seminar, and there is a debt of respect that suggests to me that I should refrain from comment. All the same...
I wasn't able to attend the seminar yesterday. I wanted to because footprints seem to me to be a challenge in the sense that to me they seem to be an interpretive way of presenting data, insofar as they draw a picture that drags the mind. Words and numbers force the mind to engage. Pictures seduce. So I wanted to know more.
I missed it. So the thoughts I post here are from outside. Considered, but external. I work on the edge of research, I do it, but spend my life defending its relevance because that is where I work. I would have trouble getting people outside full time research to use this. Though of course this may not matter.
Personally I find footprints potentially useful. I can see a lot of ways of using them, within the research context. But I am always concerned by what research does to explain itself to the people that fund it (whoever). Footprints are a step in the right direction, in that they help to visualise the situation, but in the wrong direction in the sense that that serious engagement with them requires a whole new literacy.
So, I see it as a great research tool but forget ease of use. Just a quick look at this makes me think I would hesitate to use it even if I could dedicate a couple of months to it:) It is very very rich, but there are more than 20 elements to assimilate in this particular version, and then the way the data is visually represented. As you say you have spent serious time on it. That's fine, and it is a good tool, as long as it is clear that it is for use inside the field (with all that implies) and that later there will be a job of communication to the world outside. And that is the challenge.
These are impressions. As I say I may have missed something said in the session that clarifies this. But my perspective is that this, as it is, is unlikely to be comprehensible outside the "tower". That term may really rankle, and it may be seen a different discussion, I would argue that it isnt. Science happens in society. Our lives as researchers are funded by others. We have a duty to be able to explain what we do.