SIG - HCI meeting on Sunday

Study of dogpile compared to single search engines

# of queries per user ~ 1
# of words per query ~2-3
People don’t go beyond the first page at most into second page. Not changed over the past 10 years
People spend 1- 2 minutes per query
“Are you looking for” feature was used more often then other similar features
Label which engines retrieved which sites – not sure if this is useful or not.

Implications
1 – underlying information content has an effect on how users interact with the web information system
2 – content of web searching as significant carry over regardless of changes in access to content.

We may need to change human behavior rather than technology. No good ideas on how to improve people searching

Jim Jansen – jjansen@ist.psu.edu
Amanda Spink – ah.spink@qut.edu.au

Use of Boolean – pretty low, not significant, people not using advanced search
Web log analysis allows for starting point, need to do studies to verify the data. Book coming out on this.

Google video tapes search to learn how people actually use the tool.
It is not just algorithms that need to improve; it is also the function of people use.

Examination of user behavior during web information tasks
Melanie Kellar and Carolyn Watters

1 – look at high level tasks and behaviors
2 – web based monitoring fits into our categorization of web information tasks
3- ho
Field study on the web
Used a automatic method of gathering data on a customized browser
Categorized around fact finding

Significant difference in how people do things.

Talk tomorrow afternoon on the material of classifying web information

Browsing – more useful to provide an awareness of the rate of change to a monitored age

Fact Finding – users should be able to easily identify the factual information they monitor and should only be notified when this information changes
How do we deliver this information?
Information gathering
Stored queries may be useful
Email may be the most appropriate form of notification

Transactions most difficult - airfare was often cited as participants most complex monitoring activity

Evaluate monitoring tools developed based on the findings
Validate the design
A high level classification of web information task
Characterization of user behavior during web design

Exploration of interface design for digital libraries

3 phase study – design features, effects of these changes on end user performance, propose basic and advanced features for the design of digital libraries

Pilot study
Assumptions – need to know the user – who, what, when
10 participants
Various colleges within the university

Think out loud study on interface
Wire frame here looks just like our environment, top and left nav, search, content and utilities.
Desire to increase the scent in the content area.
Leveraged ben schniderman’s work – university of Maryland
Looks like that news site, we have used / looked at before.

Found that these concepts did not work – browsing was problematic, image retrevial did not work well, rss feeds.
Tony.moore@ischool.drexel.edu

Participants wanted more interactivity, more graphics and a “cooler” interface.

An HCI Research Tool to investigate consumer interactions with Retail web sites
Sub set of a larger experiment – doctorial thesis
No existing system that would allow you to develop and create a retail site and do all of the functions online.

Point of the study was the development of a tool that allowed for testing without interaction of a facilitator. Worked well.
Results showed that browse and search is task related, not personality based. Need to review the tasks that people undertake with the environment, determine if they are browse or search related and then build accordingly. By capturing everything, you can reexamine the data for later questions.

Beyond HCI presentation notes continued:

Richard Florida – world has creativity peaks – eg taipeo, Beijing, Singapore, Tokyo, San Francisco- creative centers

Gary Olson & Judy Olson – distance matters, closer is better: unplanned encounters, familiarity

Article in NY times on Second Life

Wikimania – conference on Wiki use.

History flow of wikipedia – shows how often the article has been changed.

Make information universally usable, sociable
Ben Schneiderman – do a google on this guy, many people mentioned him.

Creativity support for individuals, groups and communities
Information literacy & efficacy

What is Self Efficacy?

Boundaries between online and offline

5 take aways
1 – software environments change rapidly
2 – new information and usage paradigms
3 – relationships and collaboration amoun broad range of users
4 – social interaction around the need to connect & contribute
5 – what works online and offline is similar, but how it works is different

Send email and ask for presentation

CC2007 June 13-15 in Washington on creativity.

Tools for studing communities – tendency to try and aggreage individuals into groups, need to use other methods to get at groups – Delphi method, etc.
Look into these tools as we go forward.
Challenge is to be seen as people who create and add value, not just studies.