October 27, 2010
How does search behavior change as search becomes more difficult? Authors: Anne Aula, Rehan M. Khan, Zhiwei Guan Keywords: behavioral signals, difficult search tasks, search engines, search strategies, web search
Abstract:
Search engines make it easy to check facts online, but finding some specific kinds of information sometimes proves to be difficult. We studied the behavioral signals that suggest that a user is having trouble in a search task. First, we ran a lab study with 23 users to gain a preliminary understanding on how users’ behavior changes when they struggle finding the information they’re looking for. The observations were then tested with 179 participants who all completed an average of 22.3 tasks from a pool of 100 tasks. The large-scale study provided quantitative support for our qualitative observations from the lab study. When having difficulty in finding information, users start to formulate more diverse queries, they use advanced operators more, and they spend a longer time on the search result page as compared to the successful tasks. The results complement the existing body of research focusing on successful search strategies.
Seeking clues to trigger the offering of help/suggestions when users are having difficulty with a search.
For topic maps, a similar line of research could be on what properties trigger recognition of particular subjects for a given audience.
- How would you design research to test what properties trigger subject recognition?
- How would the results of such research impact your design of a topic map interface?
- Would you offer/hide information based on self-identification of users? Why/why not?
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October 26, 2010
The Neighborhood Auditing Tool for the UMLS and its Source Terminologies is a presentation mentioned here several days ago.
If you missed it, go to: http://bioontology.org/neighborhood-audiiting-tool for the slides and WEBEX recording.
Pay close attention to:
The clear emphasis on getting user feedback during the design of the auditing interface.
The “neighborhood” concept he introduces has direct application to XML editing.
Find the “right” way to present parent/child/sibling controls to users and you would have a killer XML application.
Questions:
- Slides 8 – 9. Other than saying this is an error (true enough), on what basis is that judgment made?
- Slides 18 – 20. Read the references (slide 20) on neighborhoods. Pick another domain, what aspects of neighborhoods are relevant? (3-5 pages, with citations)
- Slides 21 – 22. How do your neighborhood graphs compare to those here?
- Slides 23 – 46. Short summary of the features of NAT and no citation evaluation. Or, use NAT as basis for development of interface for another domain. (project)
- Slides 49 – 55. Visualizations for use and checking. Compare to current literature on visualization of vocabularies/ontologies. (project)
- Slides 56 – 58. Snomed browsing. Report on current status. (3-5 pages, citations)
- Slices 57 – 73. Work on neighborhoods and extents. To what extent is a “small intersection type” a sub-graph and research on sub-graphs applicable? Any number of issues and questions can be gleaned from this section. (project)
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October 25, 2010
The Short Comings of Full-Text Searching by Jeffrey Beall from the University of Colorado Denver.
- The synonym problem.
- Obsolete terms.
- The homonym problem.
- Spamming.
- Inability to narrow searches by facets.
- Inability to sort search results.
- The aboutness problem.
- Figurative language.
- Search words not in web page.
- Abstract topics.
- Paired topics.
- Word lists.
- The Dark Web.
- Non-textual things.
Questions:
- Watch the slide presentation.
- Can you give three examples of each short coming? (excluding #5 and #6, which strike me as interface issues, not searching issues)
- How would you “solve” the word list issue? (Don’t assume quantum computing, etc. There are simpler answers.)
- Is metadata the only approach for “non-textual things?” Can you cite 3 papers offering other approaches?
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October 24, 2010
Indexing Nature: Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and His Fact-Gathering Strategies Authors: Staffan Müller-Wille & Sara Scharf (Working Papers on The Nature of Evidence: How Well Do ‘Facts’ Travel? No. 36/08)
Interesting article that traces the strategies used by Linnaeus when confronted with the “first bio-information crisis” as the authors term it.
Questions:
- In what ways do ontologies resemble the bound library catalogs of the early 18th century?
- Do computers make ontologies any less like those bound library catalogs?
- Short report (3-5 pages, with citations) on transition of libraries from bound catalogs to index cards.
- Linnaeus’s colleagues weren’t idle. What other strategies, successful or otherwise, were in use? (project)
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October 21, 2010
Research: What is the Interaction Cost in Information Visualization? by Enrico Bertini, came to us via Sam Hunting.
A summary of Heidi Lam’s A Framework of Interaction Costs in Information Visualization but both will repay the time spent reading/studying them.
However intuitive it may seem to its designers, no “semantic” interface is any better than it is perceived to be by its users.
Questions:
- After reading Lam’s article, evaluate two interfaces, one familiar to you and one you encounter as a first-time user.
- Using Lam’s framework, how do you evaluate the interfaces?
- What aspects of those interfaces would you most like to test with users?
- Design a test for two aspects of one of your interfaces. (project*)
- Care to update Lam’s listing of papers listing interactivity issues? (project)
* Warning: Test design is partially an art, partially a science and partially stumbling around in semantic darkness. Just so you are aware that done properly, this project will require extra work.
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October 19, 2010
Our apparent inability to imagine other audiences keeps nagging at me.
If that is true for hierarchical arrangements, then it must be true for indexes as well.
So far, standard topic maps sort of thinking.
What if that applies to explanations as well?
That is I create better explanations when I imagine the audience to be like me.
And don’t try to guess what others will find a good explanation?
Why not test explanations with audiences?
Make explanation, even of topic maps, a matter of empirical investigation rather than formal correctness.
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The effect of audience design on labeling, organizing, and finding shared files Authors: Emilee Rader Keywords: audience design, common ground, file labeling and organizing, group information management
Abstract:
In an online experiment, I apply theory from psychology and communications to find out whether group information management tasks are governed by the same communication processes as conversation. This paper describes results that replicate previous research, and expand our knowledge about audience design and packaging for future reuse when communication is mediated by a co-constructed artifact like a file-and-folder hierarchy. Results indicate that it is easier for information consumers to search for files in hierarchies created by information producers who imagine their intended audience to be someone similar to them, independent of whether the producer and consumer actually share common ground. This research helps us better understand packaging choices made by information producers, and the direct implications of those choices for other users of group information systems.
Examples from the paper:
- A scientist needs to locate procedures and results from an experiment conducted by another researcher in his lab.
- A student learning the open-source, command-line statistical computing environment R needs to find out how to calculate the mode of her dataset.
- A new member of a design team needs to review requirements analysis activities that took place before he joined the team.
- An intelligence analyst needs to consult information collected by other agencies to assess a potential threat.
Do any of those sound familiar?
Unexpected result:
In general, Consumers performed best (fewest clicks to find the target file) when the Producer created a hierarchy for an Imagined Audience from the same community, regardless of the community the Consumer community. Consumers had the most difficulty when searching in hierarchies created by a Producer for a dissimilar Imagined Audience.
In other words, imagining an audience is a bad strategy. Create a hierarchy that works for you. (And with a topic map you could let others create hierarchies that work for them.)
(Apologies for the length of this post but unexpected interface results merit the space.)
October 17, 2010
The IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Semantic Computing (TCSEM)
addresses the derivation and matching of the semantics of computational content to that of naturally expressed user intentions in order to retrieve, manage, manipulate or even create content, where “content” may be anything including video, audio, text, software, hardware, network, process, etc.
Being organized by Phillip C-Y Sheu (UC Irvine), psheu@uci.edu, Phone: +1 949 824 2660. Volunteers are needed for both organizational and technical committees.
This is a good way to meet people, make a positive contribution and, have a lot of fun.
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The next NCBO Webinar will be presented by Dr. James Geller from the New Jersey Institute of Technology on “The Neighborhood Auditing Tool for the UMLS and its Source Terminologies” at 10:00am PDT, Wednesday, October 20.
ABSTRACT:
The UMLS’s integration of more than 100 source vocabularies makes it susceptible to errors. Furthermore, its size and complexity can make it very difficult to locate such errors. A software tool, called the Neighborhood Auditing Tool (NAT), that facilitates UMLS auditing is presented. The NAT supports “neighborhood-based” auditing, where, at any given time, an auditor concentrates on a single focus concept and one of a variety of neighborhoods of its closely related concepts. The NAT can be seen as a special browser for the complex structure of the UMLS’s hierarchies. Typical diagrammatic displays of concept networks have a number of shortcomings, so the NAT utilizes a hybrid diagram/text interface that features stylized neighborhood views which retain some of the best features of both the diagrammatic layouts and text windows while avoiding the shortcomings. The NAT allows an auditor to display knowledge from both the Metathesaurus (concept) level and the Semantic Network (semantic type) level. Various additional features of the NAT that support the auditing process are described. The usefulness of the NAT is demonstrated through a group of case studies. Its impact is tested with a study involving a select group of auditors.
WEBEX DETAILS:
Topic: NCBO Webinar Series
Date: Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Time: 10:00 am, Pacific Daylight Time (San Francisco, GMT-07:00)
Meeting Number: 929 613 752
Meeting Password: ncbomeeting
****
Deeply edited version from NCBO Webinar – James Geller, October 20 at 10:00am PT, which has numerous other details.
If you translate “integration” as “merging,” the immediate relevance to topic maps and exploration of data sets becomes immediately obvious.
October 15, 2010
EigenSpokes: Surprising Patterns and Scalable Community Chipping in Large Graphs. Authors: B. Aditya Prakash, Ashwin Sridharan, Mukund Seshadri, Sridhar Machiraju, and Christos Faloutsos Keywords: EigenSpokes – Communities – Graphs
Abstract:
We report a surprising, persistent pattern in large sparse social graphs, which we term EigenSpokes. We focus on large Mobile Call graphs, spanning about 186K nodes and millions of calls, and find that the singular vectors of these graphs exhibit a striking EigenSpokes pattern wherein, when plotted against each other, they have clear, separate lines that often neatly align along specific axes (hence the term “spokes”). Furthermore, analysis of several other real-world datasets e.g., Patent Citations, Internet, etc. reveals similar phenomena indicating this to be a more fundamental attribute of large sparse graphs that is related to their community structure.
This is the first contribution of this paper. Additional ones include (a) study of the conditions that lead to such EigenSpokes, and (b) a fast algorithm for spotting and extracting tightly-knit communities, called SpokEn, that exploits our findings about the EigenSpokes pattern.
The notion of “chipping” off communities for further study from a large graph is quite intriguing.
In part because those communities (need I say subjects?) are found as the result of a process of exploration rather than declaration.
To be sure, those subjects can be “declared” in a topic map but the finding, identifying, deciding on subject identity properties for subjects is a lot more fun.
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Using Tag Clouds to Promote Community Awareness in Research Environments Authors: Alexandre Spindler, Stefania Leone, Matthias Geel, Moira C. Norrie Keywords: Tag Clouds – Ambient Information – Community Awareness
Abstract:
Tag clouds have become a popular visualisation scheme for presenting an overview of the content of document collections. We describe how we have adapted tag clouds to provide visual summaries of researchers’ activities and use these to promote awareness within a research group. Each user is associated with a tag cloud that is generated automatically based on the documents that they read and write and is integrated into an ambient information system that we have implemented.
One of the selling points of topic maps has been the serendipitous discovery of new information. Discovery is predicated on awareness and this is an interesting approach to that problem.
Questions:
- To what extent does awareness of tagging by colleagues influence future tagging?
- How would you design a project to measure the influence of tagging?
- Would the influence of tagging change your design of an information interface? Why/Why not? If so, how?
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October 14, 2010
Using text animated transitions to support navigation in document histories Authors: Fanny Chevalier, Pierre Dragicevic, Anastasia Bezerianos, Jean-Daniel Fekete Keywords: animated transitions, revision control, text editing
Abstract:
This article examines the benefits of using text animated transitions for navigating in the revision history of textual documents. We propose an animation technique for smoothly transitioning between different text revisions, then present the Diffamation system. Diffamation supports rapid exploration of revision histories by combining text animated transitions with simple navigation and visualization tools. We finally describe a user study showing that smooth text animation allows users to track changes in the evolution of textual documents more effectively than flipping pages.
Project website: http://www.aviz.fr/diffamation/
The video of tracking changes to a document has to be seen to be appreciated.
Research question as to how to visualize changes/revisions to a topic map. This is one starting place.
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FrameWire: a tool for automatically extracting interaction logic from paper prototyping tests Authors: Yang Li, Xiang Cao, Katherine Everitt, Morgan Dixon, James A. Landay Keywords: paper prototyping, programming by demonstration
Abstract:
Paper prototyping offers unique affordances for interface design. However, due to its spontaneous nature and the limitations of paper, it is difficult to distill and communicate a paper prototype design and its user test findings to a wide audience. To address these issues, we created FrameWire, a computer vision-based system that automatically extracts interaction flows from the video recording of paper prototype user tests. Based on the extracted logic, FrameWire offers two distinct benefits for designers: a structural view of the video recording that allows a designer or a stakeholder to easily distill and understand the design concept and user interaction behaviors, and automatic generation of interactive HTML-based prototypes that can be easily tested with a larger group of users as well as “walked through” by other stakeholders. The extraction is achieved by automatically aggregating video frame sequences into an interaction flow graph based on frame similarities and a designer-guided clustering process. The results of evaluating FrameWire with realistic paper prototyping tests show that our extraction approach is feasible and FrameWire is a promising tool for enhancing existing prototyping practice.
A clever approach that enhances a standard tool for interface design.
Obviously useful for the design of topic map interfaces.
Curious though, has anyone used paper prototyping to design topics or the merging of topics?
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October 13, 2010
Exploiting knowledge-in-the-head and knowledge-in-the-social-web: effects of domain expertise on exploratory search in individual and social search environments Authors: Ruogu Kang, Wai-Tat Fu, Thomas George Kannampallil Keywords: domain expertise, exploratory search, search behavior
Abstract:
Our study compared how experts and novices performed exploratory search using a traditional search engine and a social tagging system. As expected, results showed that social tagging systems could facilitate exploratory search for both experts and novices. We, however, also found that experts were better at interpreting the social tags and generating search keywords, which made them better at finding information in both interfaces. Specifically, experts found more general information than novices by better interpretation of social tags in the tagging system; and experts also found more domain-specific information by generating more of their own keywords. We found a dynamic interaction between knowledge-in-the-head and knowledge-in-the-social-web that although information seekers are more and more reliant on information from the social Web, domain expertise is still important in guiding them to find and evaluate the information. Implications on the design of social search systems that facilitate exploratory search are also discussed.
Every librarian should have the first page of this article posted to their office door, every library school on the local bulletin board.
Think about it. Expert searchers (read librarians) find better information than novices and can serve as guides to better information.
More research is needed on how to bridge that gap in search interfaces.
In libraries I think it is now called a “reference interview.”
(Please email, tweet, etc. this post to your librarian friends.)
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Reactive information foraging for evolving goals Authors: Joseph Lawrance, Margaret Burnett, Rachel Bellamy, Christopher Bogart, Calvin Swart Keywords: field study, information foraging theory, programming
Abstract:
Information foraging models have predicted the navigation paths of people browsing the web and (more recently) of programmers while debugging, but these models do not explicitly model users’ goals evolving over time. We present a new information foraging model called PFIS2 that does model information seeking with potentially evolving goals. We then evaluated variants of this model in a field study that analyzed programmers’ daily navigations over a seven-month period. Our results were that PFIS2 predicted users’ navigation remarkably well, even though the goals of navigation, and even the information landscape itself, were changing markedly during the pursuit of information.
In case you are wondering, “PFIS2 (Programmer Flow by Information Scent 2).”
A study of user information seeking behavior over seven (7) months following two (2) professional programmers.
Provocative work but it would be more convincing if the study sample were larger.
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October 9, 2010
Knowledge Construction with Social Web Tools Author(s): Margarida Lucas, António Moreira Keywords: Social Web – Knowledge Construction – Interaction Analysis
Abstract:
This paper examines knowledge construction in a distributed learning environment supported by social web tools. Research data was gathered from online asynchronous discussions in a first-year Masters Degree course in Multimedia in Education. Our analysis was modeled on Gunawardena, Lowe and Anderson’s (1997) study and results indicate that, despite a significant percentage in the phase of sharing and comparing information, interaction at the highest levels of knowledge construction is relevant and suggests that knowledge was constructed.
Important work for two reasons:
First, studying actual use of social tools beats by a wide margin projection by programmers of what they think users will find intuitive or useful.
Second, how to study users and software is in its infancy and explorations such as this one provide a basis for further study in this critical area.
There is a “technical” side to topic maps but the “social” and “interface” sides are just as important. Alone, none of them are sufficient for a successful topic map application.
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October 8, 2010
A Haptic-Based Framework for Chemistry Education: Experiencing Molecular Interactions with Touch Author(s): Sara Comai, Davide Mazza Keywords: Haptic technology – Chemical education and teaching – Molecular interaction
Abstract:
The science of haptics has received a great attention in the last decade for data visualization and training. In particular haptics can be introduced as a novel technology for educational purposes. The usage of haptic technologies can greatly help to make the students feel sensations not directly experienceable and typically only reported as notions, sometimes also counter-intuitively, in textbooks. In this work, we present a haptically-enhanced system for the tactile exploration of molecules. After a brief description of the architecture of the developed system, the paper describes how it has been introduced in the usual didactic activity by providing a support for the comprehension of concepts typically explained only theoretically. Users feedbacks and impressions are reported as results of this innovation in teaching.
Imagine researchers using haptics to recognize molecules or molecular reactions.
Are the instances of recognition to be compared with other such instances?
How would you establish the boundaries for a “match?”
How would you communicate those boundaries to others?
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October 7, 2010
KP-Lab System: A Collaborative Environment for Design, Realization and Examination of Different Knowledge Practices Author(s): Ján Parali?, František Babi? Keywords: collaborative system – practices – patterns – time-line – summative information
Abstract:
This paper presents a collaborative working and learning environment called KP-Lab System. It provides a complex and multifunctional application built on principles of semantic web, exploiting also some web2.0 approaches as Google Apps or mashups. This system offers virtual user environment with different, necessary and advanced features for collaborative learning or working knowledge intensive activities. This paper briefly presents the whole system with special emphasis on its semantic-based aspects and analytical tools.
Public Site: http://2d.mobile.evtek.fi/shared-space (Be aware that FireFox will say this is an untrusted site as of 6 October 2010. Not sure why but I just added a security exception to access the site.)
Software: http://www.kp-lab.org/tools
Exploration of semantic user interfaces is in its infancy and this is another attempt to explore that space.
Questions/Activities:
- Create account and login to public site (Organization: none)
- Comments on the interface?
- Suggestions for changes to interface?
- Download/install software (geeks)
- Create content (with other class members)
- Likes/dislikes managing content on basis of subject identity?
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October 6, 2010
The RelFinder user interface: interactive exploration of relationships between objects of interest Authors: Steffen Lohmann, Philipp Heim, Timo Stegemann, Jürgen Ziegler Keywords: dbpedia, decision support, graph visualization, linked data, relationship discovery, relationship web, semantic user interfaces, semantic web, sparql, visual exploration
Abstract:
Being aware of the relationships that exist between objects of interest is crucial in many situations. The RelFinder user interface helps to get an overview: Even large amounts of relationships can be visualized, filtered, and analyzed by the user. Common concepts of knowledge representation are exploited in order to support interactive exploration both on the level of global filters and single relationships. The RelFinder is easy-to-use and works on every RDF knowledge base that provides standardized SPARQL access
Software: RelFinder
RelFinder presents a way to leverage data already in RDF for the creation of associations in topic maps.
Or to explore data already available in RDF.
Exploration of relationships is important for “data” but even more important for the syntaxes that contain data.
Such as equivalence between subjects represented by syntax tokens.
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October 5, 2010
tagging, communities, vocabulary, evolution Authors: Shilad Sen, Shyong K. (Tony) Lam, Al Mamunur Rashid, Dan Cosley, Dan Frankowski, Jeremy Osterhouse, F. Maxwell Harper, John Riedl Keywords: communities, evolution, social book-marking, tagging, vocabulary
Abstract:
A tagging community’s vocabulary of tags forms the basis for social navigation and shared expression. We present a user-centric model of vocabulary evolution in tagging communities based on community influence and personal tendency. We evaluate our model in an emergent tagging system by introducing tagging features into the MovieLens recommender system. We explore four tag selection algorithms for displaying tags applied by other community members. We analyze the algorithms’ effect on vocabulary evolution, tag utility, tag adoption, and user satisfaction.
The influence of an interface on the creation of topic maps is an open area for research. Research on tagging behavior is an excellent starting point for such studies.
Question: Would you modify the experimental setup to test the creation of topics? If so, in what way? Why?
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October 4, 2010
Understanding web documents using semantic overlays Authors: Grégoire Burel, Amparo Elizabeth Cano Keywords: semantic overlays, semantic web, web augmentation
Abstract:
The Ozone Browser is a platform independent tool that enables users to visually augment the knowledge presented in a web document in an unobtrusive way. This tool supports the user comprehension of Web documents through the use of Semantic Overlays. This tool uses linked data and lightweight semantics for getting relevant information within a document. The current implementation uses a JavaScript bookmarklet.
The “overlay” nature of this interface attracted my attention. Suspect it would work with “other” sources of page annotation, such as topic maps.
Suspicion only since the project page, http://oak.dcs.shef.ac.uk/sparks/ is a dead link as of 4 October 2010. I have written to the project and will update its status.
Update:
Apologies for the long delay in following up on this entry!
The correct URL, not the one reported in the article: http://nebula.dcs.shef.ac.uk/sparks/ozone.
Now I will have to try to find the time to try the bookmarketlet. Comments if you have already?
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Finding your way in a multi-dimensional semantic space with luminoso Authors: Robert H. Speer, Catherine Havasi, K. Nichole Treadway, Henry Lieberman Keywords: common sense, n-dimensional visualization, natural language processing, SVD
Abstract:
In AI, we often need to make sense of data that can be measured in many different dimensions — thousands of dimensions or more — especially when this data represents natural language semantics. Dimensionality reduction techniques can make this kind of data more understandable and more powerful, by projecting the data into a space of many fewer dimensions, which are suggested by the computer. Still, frequently, these results require more dimensions than the human mind can grasp at once to represent all the meaningful distinctions in the data.
We present Luminoso, a tool that helps researchers to visualize and understand a multi-dimensional semantic space by exploring it interactively. It also streamlines the process of creating such a space, by inputting text documents and optionally including common-sense background information. This interface is based on the fundamental operation of “grabbing” a point, which simultaneously allows a user to rotate their view using that data point, view associated text and statistics, and compare it to other data points. This also highlights the point’s neighborhood of semantically-associated points, providing clues for reasons as to why the points were classified along the dimensions they were. We show how this interface can be used to discover trends in a text corpus, such as free-text responses to a survey.
I particularly like the interactive rotation about a data point.
Makes me think of rotating identifications or even within complexes of subjects.
The presentation of “rotation” I suspect to be domain specific.
The “geek” graph/node presentation probably isn’t the best one for all audiences. Open question as to what might work better.
See: Luminoso (homepage) and Luminoso (Github)
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A multimodal dialogue mashup for medical image semantics Authors: Daniel Sonntag, and Manuel Möller Keywords: collaborative environments, design, touchscreen interface
Abstract:
This paper presents a multimodal dialogue mashup where different users are involved in the use of different user interfaces for the annotation and retrieval of medical images. Our solution is a mashup that integrates a multimodal interface for speech-based annotation of medical images and dialogue-based image retrieval with a semantic image annotation tool for manual annotations on a desktop computer. A remote RDF repository connects the annotation and querying task into a common framework and serves as the semantic backend system for the advanced multimodal dialogue a radiologist can use.
With regard to the semantics of the interface the authors say:
In a complex interaction system, a common ground of terms and structures is absolutely necessary. A shared representation and a common knowledge base ease the dataflow within the system and avoid costly and error-prone transformation processes.
I disagree with both statements but concede that for a particular use cases, the cost of dataflow question will be resolved differently.
I like the article as an example of interface design.
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October 3, 2010
Automatic generation of research trails in web history Authors: Elin Rønby Pedersen, Karl Gyllstrom, Shengyin Gu, Peter Jin Hong Keywords: activity based computing, automatic clustering, ethnography, semantic clustering, task browser, web history
Abstract:
We propose the concept of research trails to help web users create and reestablish context across fragmented research processes without requiring them to explicitly structure and organize the material. A research trail is an ordered sequence of web pages that were accessed as part of a larger investigation; they are automatically constructed by filtering and organizing users’ activity history, using a combination of semantic and activity based criteria for grouping similar visited web pages. The design was informed by an ethnographic study of ordinary people doing research on the web, emphasizing a need to support research processes that are fragmented and where the research question is still in formation. This paper motivates and describes our algorithms for generating research trails.
Research trails can be applied in several situations: as the underlying mechanism for a research task browser, or as feed to an ambient display of history information while searching. A prototype was built to assess the utility of the first option, a research trail browser.
What is a map if it isn’t an accumulated set of research trails?
In the early stages of what it means to create, share and extend trails into information sets.
Will you be one of the explorers who creates research trails into information sets as they pass the into the giga, tera and petabyte ranges and beyond?
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Exploratory information search by domain experts and novices Authors: Ruogu Kang, Wai-Tat Fu Keywords: domain expertise, exploratory search, social search
Abstract:
The arising popularity of social tagging system has the potential to transform traditional web search into a new era of social search. Based on the finding that domain expertise could influence search behavior in traditional search engines, we hypothesized and tested the idea that domain expertise would have similar influence on search behavior in a social tagging system. We conducted an experiment comparing search behavior of experts and novices when they searched using a tradition search engine and a social tagging system. Results from our experiment showed that experts relied more on their own domain knowledge to generate search queries, while novices were influenced more by social cues in the social tagging system. Experts were also found to conform to each other more than novices in their choice of bookmarks and tags. Implications on the design of future social information systems are discussed.
Empirical validation of the idea that expert searchers (dare I say librarians?) can improve the search results for “novice” searchers.
A line of research that librarians need to take up and expand to combat budget cuts by the uninformed.
Note that experts suffer from the “vocabulary” problem just like novices, just in more sophisticated ways.
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Designing a thesaurus-based comparison search interface for linked cultural heritage sources Authors: Alia Amin, Michiel Hildebrand, Jacco van Ossenbruggen, Lynda Hardman Keywords: comparison search, thesauri, cultural heritage
Prototype: LISA, e-culture.multimedian.nl
Abstract:
Comparison search is an information seeking task where a user examines individual items or sets of items for similarities and differences. While this is a known information need among experts and knowledge workers, appropriate tools are not available. In this paper, we discuss comparison search in the cultural heritage domain, a domain characterized by large, rich and heterogeneous data sets, where different organizations deploy different schemata and terminologies to describe their artifacts. This diversity makes meaningful comparison difficult. We developed a thesaurus-based comparison search application called LISA, a tool that allows a user to search, select and compare sets of artifacts. Different visualizations allow users to use different comparison strategies to cope with the underlying heterogeneous data and the complexity of the search tasks. We conducted two user studies. A preliminary study identifies the problems experts face while performing comparison search tasks. A second user study examines the effectiveness of LISA in helping to solve comparison search tasks. The main contribution of this paper is to establish design guidelines for the data and interface of a comparison search application. Moreover, we offer insights into when thesauri and metadata are appropriate for use in such applications.
User-centric project that develops an interface into heterogeneous data sets.
What I would characterize as pre-mapping, that is no “canonical” mapping has yet been established.
Perhaps a good idea to preserve a pre-mapping stage as any mapping represents but one choice among many.
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October 2, 2010
Facilitating exploratory search by model-based navigational cues Authors: Wai-Tat Fu, Thomas G. Kannampallil, Ruogu Kang Keywords: exploratory learning, knowledge exchange, semantic imitation, SNIF-ACT, social tagging
Abstract:
We present an extension of a computational cognitive model of social tagging and exploratory search called the semantic imitation model. The model assumes a probabilistic representation of semantics for both internal and external knowledge, and utilizes social tags as navigational cues during exploratory search. We used the model to generate a measure of information scent that controls exploratory search behavior, and simulated the effects of multiple presentations of navigational cues on both simple information retrieval and exploratory search performance based on a previous model called SNIF-ACT. We found that search performance can be significantly improved by these model-based presentations of navigational cues for both experts and novices. The result suggested that exploratory search performance depends critically on the match between internal knowledge (domain expertise) and external knowledge structures (folksonomies). Results have significant implications on how social information systems should be designed to facilitate knowledge exchange among users with different background knowledge.
Not all users require (or can use) the same clues.
Something to think about when designing the interface, for topic maps or elsewhere.
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DocuBrowse: faceted searching, browsing, and recommendations in an enterprise context Authors: Andreas Girgensohn, Frank Shipman, Francine Chen, Lynn Wilcox Keywords: document management, document recommendation, document retrieval, document visualization, faceted search
Abstract:
Browsing and searching for documents in large, online enterprise document repositories are common activities. While internet search produces satisfying results for most user queries, enterprise search has not been as successful because of differences in document types and user requirements. To support users in finding the information they need in their online enterprise repository, we created DocuBrowse, a faceted document browsing and search system. Search results are presented within the user-created document hierarchy, showing only directories and documents matching selected facets and containing text query terms. In addition to file properties such as date and file size, automatically detected document types, or genres, serve as one of the search facets. Highlighting draws the user’s attention to the most promising directories and documents while thumbnail images and automatically identified keyphrases help select appropriate documents. DocuBrowse utilizes document similarities, browsing histories, and recommender system techniques to suggest additional promising documents for the current facet and content filters.
Watch the movie of this interface in action at the ACM page.
Then imagine it with collaboration and subject identity.
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Towards a reputation-based model of social web search Authors: Kevin McNally, Michael P. O’Mahony, Barry Smyth, Maurice Coyle, Peter Briggs Keywords: collaborative web search, heystaks, reputation model
Abstract:
While web search tasks are often inherently collaborative in nature, many search engines do not explicitly support collaboration during search. In this paper, we describe HeyStaks (www.heystaks.com), a system that provides a novel approach to collaborative web search. Designed to work with mainstream search engines such as Google, HeyStaks supports searchers by harnessing the experiences of others as the basis for result recommendations. Moreover, a key contribution of our work is to propose a reputation system for HeyStaks to model the value of individual searchers from a result recommendation perspective. In particular, we propose an algorithm to calculate reputation directly from user search activity and we provide encouraging results for our approach based on a preliminary analysis of user activity and reputation scores across a sample of HeyStaks users.
The reputation system posed by the authors could easily underlie a collaborative approach to creation of a topic map.
Think collections not normally accessed by web search engines, The National Archives (U.S.) and similar document collections.
Reputation + trails + subject identity = Hard to Beat.
See www.heystaks.com as a starting point.
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October 1, 2010
SocialSearchBrowser: A novel mobile search and information discovery tool Authors: Karen Church, Joachim Neumann, Mauro Cherubini and Nuria Oliver Keywords: Mobile search, social search, social networks, location-based services, context, field study, user evaluation
Abstract:
The mobile Internet offers anytime, anywhere access to a wealth of information to billions of users across the globe. However, the mobile Internet represents a challenging information access platform due to the inherent limitations of mobile environments, limitations that go beyond simple screen size and network issues. Mobile users often have information needs which are impacted by contexts such as location and time. Furthermore, human beings are social creatures that often seek out new strategies for sharing knowledge and information in mobile settings. To investigate the social aspect of mobile search, we have developed SocialSearchBrowser (SSB), a novel proof-of-concept interface that incorporates social networking capabilities with key mobile contexts to improve the search and information discovery experience of mobile users. In this paper, we present the results of an exploratory field study of SSB and outline key implications for the design of next generation mobile information access services.
Interesting combination of traditional “ask a search engine” with even more traditional “ask your friend’s” results. Sample is too small to say what issues might be encountered with wider use but definitely a step in an interesting direction.
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