I have commented on several papers from CHI2013 Enrico Bertini posted to his blog.
I wasn’t aware of the difficulty Enrico must have had done to come up with his short list!
Take a look at the day-by-day schedule for CHI2013.
You will gravitate to some papers more than others. But I haven’t seen any slots that don’t have interesting material.
May be oversight on my part but I did not see any obvious links for the presentations/papers.
Definitely a resource to return to over and over again.
Motif Simplification: Improving Network Visualization Readability with Fan, Connector, and Clique Glyphs by Cody Dunne and Ben Shneiderman.
Abstract:
Analyzing networks involves understanding the complex relationships between entities, as well as any attributes they may have. The widely used node-link diagrams excel at this task, but many are difficult to extract meaning from because of the inherent complexity of the relationships and limited screen space. To help address this problem we introduce a technique called motif simplification, in which common patterns of nodes and links are replaced with compact and meaningful glyphs. Well-designed glyphs have several benefits: they (1) require less screen space and layout effort, (2) are easier to understand in the context of the network, (3) can reveal otherwise hidden relationships, and (4) preserve as much underlying information as possible. We tackle three frequently occurring and high-payoff motifs: fans of nodes with a single neighbor, connectors that link a set of anchor nodes, and cliques of completely connected nodes. We contribute design guidelines for motif glyphs; example glyphs for the fan, connector, and clique motifs; algorithms for detecting these motifs; a free and open source reference implementation; and results from a controlled study of 36 participants that demonstrates the effectiveness of motif simplification.
When I read “replace,” “aggregation,” etc., I automatically think about merging in topic maps. 😉
After replacing “common patterns of nodes and links” I may still be interested in the original content of those nodes and links.
Or I may wish to partially unpack them based on some property in the original content.
Definitely a paper for a slow, deep read.
Not to mention research on the motifs in graph representations of your topic maps.
I first saw this in Visualization Papers at CHI 2013 by Enrico Bertini.
Contextifier: Automatic Generation of Annotated Stock Visualizations by Jessica Hullman, Nicholas Diakopoulos and Eytan Adar.
Abstract:
Online news tools—for aggregation, summarization and automatic generation—are an area of fruitful development as reading news online becomes increasingly commonplace. While textual tools have dominated these developments, annotated information visualizations are a promising way to complement articles based on their ability to add context. But the manual effort required for professional designers to create thoughtful annotations for contextualizing news visualizations is difficult to scale. We describe the design of Contextifier, a novel system that automatically produces custom, annotated visualizations of stock behavior given a news article about a company. Contextifier’s algorithms for choosing annotations is informed by a study of professionally created visualizations and takes into account visual salience, contextual relevance, and a detection of key events in the company’s history. In evaluating our system we find that Contextifier better balances graphical salience and relevance than the baseline.
The authors use a stock graph as the primary context in which to link in other news about a publicly traded company.
Other aspects of Contextifier were focused on enhancement of that primary context.
The lesson here is that a tool with a purpose is easier to hone than a tool that could be anything for just about anybody.
I first saw this at Visualization Papers at CHI 2013 by Enrico Bertini.
Visualization – Human-Computer Interaction Lab – University of Maryland
From the webpage:
We believe that the future of user interfaces is in the direction of larger, information-abundant displays. With such designs, the worrisome flood of information can be turned into a productive river of knowledge. Our experience during the past eight years has been that visual query formulation and visual display of results can be combined with the successful strategies of direct manipulation. Human perceptual skills are are quite remarkable and largely underutilized in current information and computing systems. Based on this insight, we developed dynamic queries, starfield displays, treemaps, treebrowsers, zoomable user interfaces, and a variety of widgets to present, search, browse, filter, and compare rich information spaces.
There are many visual alternatives but the basic principle for browsing and searching might be summarized as the Visual Information Seeking Mantra: Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand. In several projects we rediscovered this principle and therefore wrote it down and highlighted it as a continuing reminder. If we can design systems with effective visual displays, direct manipulation interfaces, and dynamic queries then users will be able to responsibly and confidently take on even more ambitious tasks.
Projects and summaries of projects too numerous to list.
Working my way through them now.
Thought you might enjoy perusing the list for yourself.
Lots of very excellent work!
Evaluating the Efficiency of Physical Visualizations by Yvonne Jansen, Pierre Dragicevic and Jean-Daniel Fekete.
Abstract:
Data sculptures are an increasingly popular form of physical visualization whose purposes are essentially artistic, communicative or educational. But can physical visualizations help carry out actual information visualization tasks? We present the first infovis study comparing physical to on-screen visualizations. We focus on 3D visualizations, as these are common among physical visualizations but known to be problematic on computers. Taking 3D bar charts as an example, we show that moving visualizations to the physical world can improve users’ efficiency at information retrieval tasks. In contrast, augmenting on-screen visualizations with stereoscopic rendering alone or with prop-based manipulation was of limited help. The efficiency of physical visualizations seems to stem from features that are unique to physical objects, such as their ability to be touched and their perfect visual realism. These findings provide empirical motivation for current research on fast digital fabrication and self-reconfiguring interfaces.
My first thought on reading this paper was a comparison of looking at a topographic map of an area and seeing it from the actual location.
May explain some of the disconnect between military planners looking at maps and troops looking at terrain.
I’m not current on the latest feedback research to simulate the sense of touch in VR.
Curious how good the simulation would need to be to approach the efficiency of physical visualizations?
While others struggle to deliver content to a 3″ to 5″ inch screen, you can work on the next generation of interfaces, which are as large as you can “see.”
I first saw this at: Visualization Papers at CHI 2013 by Enrico Bertini.
Weighted Graph Comparison Techniques for Brain Connectivity Analysis by Basak Alper, Benjamin Bach, Nathalie Henry Riche.
Abstract:
The analysis of brain connectivity is a vast field in neuroscience with a frequent use of visual representations and an increasing need for visual analysis tools. Based on an in-depth literature review and interviews with neuroscientists, we explore high-level brain connectivity analysis tasks that need to be supported by dedicated visual analysis tools. A significant example of such a task is the comparison of different connectivity data in the form of weighted graphs. Several approaches have been suggested for graph comparison within information visualization, but the comparison of weighted graphs has not been addressed. We explored the design space of applicable visual representations and present augmented adjacency matrix and node-link visualizations. To assess which representation best support weighted graph comparison tasks, we performed a controlled experiment. Our findings suggest that matrices support these tasks well, outperforming node-link diagrams. These results have significant implications for the design of brain connectivity analysis tools that require weighted graph comparisons. They can also inform the design of visual analysis tools in other domains, e.g. comparison of weighted social networks or biological pathways.
The study used only eleven (11) participants on tasks that are domain dependent, but the authors are to be lauded for noticing:
While weighted graphs are present in a plethora of domains: computer networks, social networks, biological pathways networks, air traffic networks, commercial trade net-works; very few tools currently exist to represent and compare them. As we used generic comparison tasks during the study, our results can also inform the design of general weighted graph comparison tools.
Rather than inventing yet another weighted graph comparison tool, the authors compared some of the options for visualizing a weighted graph with users.
Evidence based interface design?
I first saw this at: Visualization Papers at CHI 2013 by Enrico Bertini.
Bacon.js Tutorial Part I : Hacking With jQuery
From the post:
This is the first part of a hopefully upcoming series of postings intended as a Bacon.js tutorial. I’ll be building a fully functional, however simplified, AJAX registration form for an imaginary web site.
This material is based on my presentation/hands-on session at Reaktor Dev Day 2012 where I had to squeeze a Bacon.js intro and a coding session into less than an hour. I didn’t have much time to discuss the problem and jumped into the solution a bit too fast. This time I’ll first try to explain the problem I’m trying to solve with Bacon. So bear with me. Or have a look at the Full Solution first if you like.
A functional programming example that doesn’t start with theory.
How very odd. 😉
Other posts in this series:
I just started reading Programming As If People Mattered by Nathaniel Borenstein.
To start chapter 5, Nathaniel relates this story about TECO, an “infamously powerful but hard-to-use line editor…”:
As you probably know, TECO is a line editor in which all of the commands are control characters. To enter some text you would type control-a, followed by the text, and a control-d to end the text. When I was first learning TECO I decided to type in a ten-page paper. I typed control-a, followed by all ten pages of text, followed by the control-d. Unfortunately, as I was typing in the paper I must have hit another control character. So when I typed the final control-d I received the message: ‘Unknown control character–input ignored.’ An hour of typing down the drain.
If that sounds like amusing but ancient history, recall in RSSOwl and Feed Validation a single errant control character in an RSS feed makes RSSOwl refuse the entire feed.
The date of the TECO story isn’t reported but TECO was invented in 1963. (Wikipedia has a nice article, TECO (text editor))
Fifty (50) years later we are still struggling with a sensible responses to errant control characters in data feeds?
Are you filtering non-valid control characters from RSS feeds?
Or are you still “current,” circa 1963?
Who nailed the principles of great UI design? Microsoft, that’s who by Andrew C. Oliver.
From the post:
One of the best articles I’ve ever read on user interface design is this 12-year-old classic — written by Microsoft, no less. Published long before smartphones and modern tablets emerged, it fully explains the essence of good UI design. Amazingly, it criticizes Microsoft’s own UIs and explains why they are bad, though it was written at a time when Microsoft was not known for its humility.
Because my company has a mobile application division — and increasingly does full application development in our enterprise open source division — I often have to explain what makes a good or bad UI to customers. I’ve frequently referred to this article by way of explanation.
To give you an idea of my assessment of the “12-year-old classic,” I have saved the page and converted it to PDF for local reading/printing.
It is worth re-reading every month or so if you are interested in user interfaces.
Or should I say if you are interested in successful user interfaces.
Read Andrew’s post as well. It updates us on the continuing releance of IUI (Inductive User Interface) for desktop, web and mobile interfaces.
I first saw this at DZone.
Patterns of information use and exchange: case studies of researchers in the life sciences
From the post:
A report of research patterns in life sciences revealing that researcher practices diverge from policies promoted by funders and information service providers
This report by the RIN and the British Library provides a unique insight into how information is used by researchers across life sciences. Undertaken by the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the UK Digital Curation Centre and the University of Edinburgh?s Information Services, the report concludes that one-size-fits-all information and data sharing policies are not achieving scientifically productive and cost-efficient information use in life sciences.
The report was developed using an innovative approach to capture the day-to-day patterns of information use in seven research teams from a wide range of disciplines, from botany to clinical neuroscience. The study undertaken over 11 months and involving 56 participants found that there is a significant gap between how researchers behave and the policies and strategies of funders and service providers. This suggests that the attempts to implement such strategies have had only a limited impact. Key findings from the report include:
- Researchers use informal and trusted sources of advice from colleagues, rather than institutional service teams, to help identify information sources and resources
- The use of social networking tools for scientific research purposes is far more limited than expected
- Data and information sharing activities are mainly driven by needs and benefits perceived as most important by life scientists rather than top-down policies and strategies
- There are marked differences in the patterns of information use and exchange between research groups active in different areas of the life sciences, reinforcing the need to avoid standardised policy approaches
Not the most recent research in the area but a good reminder that users do as users do, not as system/software/ontology architects would have them do.
What approach does your software take?
Does it make users perform their tasks the “right” way?
Or does it help users do their tasks “their” way?
Atlas of Design by Caitlin Dempsey.
From the post:
Do you love beautiful maps? The Atlas of Design has been reprinted and is now available for purchase. Published by the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS), this compendium showcases cartography at some of its finest. The atlas was originally published in 2012 and features the work of 27 cartographers. In early 2012, a call for contributions was sent out and 140 entries from 90 different individuals and groups submitted their work. A panel of eight volunteer judges plus the book’s editors evaluated the entries and selected the finalists.
The focus of the Atlas of Design is on the aesthetics and design involved in mapmaking. Tim Wallace and Daniel Huffman, the editors of Atlas of Design explain the book’s introduction about the focus of the book:
Aesthetics separate workable maps from elegant ones.
This book is about the latter category.
My personal suspicion is that aesthetics separate legible topic maps from those that attract repeat users.
The only way to teach aesthetics (which varies by culture and social group) is by experience.
This is a great starting point for your aesthetics education.
Designing Search: Displaying Results by Tony Russell-Rose.
From the post:
Search is a conversation: a dialogue between user and system that can be every bit as rich as human conversation. Like human dialogue, it is bidirectional: on one side is the user with their information need, which they articulate as some form of query.
On the other is the system and its response, which it expresses a set of search results. Together, these two elements lie at the heart of the search experience, defining and shaping much of the information seeking dialogue. In this piece, we examine the most universal of elements within that response: the search result.
Basic Principles
Search results play a vital role in the search experience, communicating the richness and diversity of the overall result set, while at the same time conveying the detail of each individual item. This dual purpose creates the primary tension in the design: results that are too detailed risk wasting valuable screen space while those that are too succinct risk omitting vital information.
Suppose you’re looking for a new job, and you browse to the 40 or so open positions listed on UsabilityNews. The results are displayed in concise groups of ten, occupying minimal screen space. But can you tell which ones might be worth pursuing?
As always a great post by Tony but a little over the top with:
“…a dialogue between user and system that can be every bit as rich as human conversation.”
Not in my experience but that’s not everyone’s experience.
Has anyone tested the thesis that dialogue between a user and search engine is as rich as between user and reference librarian?
Why Most People Don’t Follow Best Practices by Kendra Little.
Posted in a MS SQL Server context but the lesson applies to software, systems, and processes alike:
Unfortunately, human nature makes people persist all sorts of bad practices. I find everything in the wild from weekly reboots to crazy settings in Windows and SQL Server that damage performance and can cause outages. When I ask why the settings are in place, I usually hear a story that goes like this:
- Once upon a time, in a land far far away there was a problem
- The people of the land were very unhappy
- A bunch of changes were made
- Some of the changes were recommended by someone on the internet. We think.
- The problem went away
- The people of the land were happier
- We hunkered down and just hoped the problem would never come back
- The people of the land have been growing more and more unhappy over time again
Most of the time “best practices” are implemented to try and avoid pain rather than to configure things well. And most of the time they aren’t thought out in terms of long term performance. Most people haven’t really implemented any best practices, they’ve just reacted to situations.
How are the people of the land near you?
Let Them Pee: Avoiding the Sign-Up/Sign-In Mobile Antipattern by Greg Nudelman.
From the post:
The application SitOrSquat is a brilliant little piece of social engineering software that enables people to find bathrooms on the go, when they gotta go. Obviously, the basic use case implies a, shall we say, certain sense of urgency. This urgency is all but unfelt by the company that acquired the app, Procter and Gamble (P&G), as it would appear for the express purposes of marketing the Charmin brand of toilet paper. (It’s truly a match made in heaven—but I digress.)
Not content with the business of simply “Squeezing the Charmin” (that is, simple advertising), P&G executives decided for some unfathomable reason to force people to sign up for the app in multiple ways. First, as you can see in Figure 1, the app forces the customer (who is urgently looking for a place to relieve himself, let’s not forget) to use the awkward picker control to select his birthday to allegedly find out if he has been “potty trained.” This requirement would be torture on a normal day, but—I think you’ll agree—it’s excruciating when you really gotta go.
The horror of SitOrSquat doesn’t stop there.
Greg’s telling of the story is masterful. You owe it to yourself to read it more than once.
Relevant for mobile apps but also to “free” whitepapers, demo software or the other crap that requires name/email/phone details.
Name/email/phone details support marketing people who drain funds away from development and induce potential customers to look elsewhere.
From the webpage:
Elm is a functional reactive programming (FRP) language that compiles to HTML, CSS, and JS. FRP is a concise and elegant way to create highly interactive applications and avoid callbacks.
The hyperlinks for “create,” “highly,” “interactive,” and “applictions,” all lead to examples using Elm.
I never was much of a Pong player. More of a Missile Command and Boulder Dash fan. Still, it is an interesting demonstration. (Wasn’t working when I tried it.)
Yes, another programming language. 😉
But, it does look lite enough to encourage experimentation with interfaces.
Whether it is lite enough to keep people from feeling “invested” in prior interface choices only time will tell.
Not for everyone but I can imagine a topic map interface that offers design patterns in UML notation which are extended/completed by a user.
Or interfaces that are drawing kits of nodes and edges. Some predefined, some you define.
Or interfaces with text boxes and reasonable names for their contents.
Or other variations I cannot imagine.
Could be “lite” or “feature rich,” although I lean towards the “lite” side.
Wherever you come down on that continuum, topic maps need interfaces as varied as its users.
HCIR site gets publication page by Gene Golovchinsky.
From the post:
Over the past six years of the HCIR series of meetings, we’ve accumulated a number of publications. We’ve had a series of reports about the meetings, papers published in the ACM Digital Library, and an up-coming Special Issue of IP&M. In the run-up to this year’s event (stay tuned!), I decided it might be useful to consolidate these publications in one place. Hence, we now have the HCIR Publications page.
Human-Computer Information Retrieval (HCIR) if the lingo is unfamiliar.
Will ease access to a great set of papers, at least in one respect.
One small improvement:
Do no rely upon the ACM Digital Library as the sole repository for these papers.
Access isn’t an issue for me but I suspect it may be for a number of others.
Hiding information behind a paywall diminishes its impact.
Writing Effective Requirement Documents – An Overview
From the post:
In every UX Design project, the most important part is the requirements gathering process. This is an overview of some of the possible methods of requirements gathering.
Good design will take into consideration all business, user and functional requirements and even sometimes inform new functionality & generate new requirements, based on user comments and feedback. Without watertight requirements specification to work from, much of the design is left to assumptions and subjectivity. Requirements put a project on track & provide a basis for the design. A robust design always ties back to its requirements at every step of the design process.
Although there are many ways to translate project requirements, Use cases, User Stories and Scenarios are the most frequently used methods to capture them. Some elaborate projects may have a comprehensive Business Requirements Document (BRD), which forms the absolute basis for all deliverables for that project.
I will get a bit deeper into what each of this is and in which context each one is used…
Requirements are useful for any project. Especially useful for software projects. But critical for a successful topic map project.
Topic maps can represent or omit any subject of conversation, any relationship between subjects or any other information about a subject.
Not a good practice to assume others will make the same assumptions as you about the subjects to include or what information to include about them.
They might and they might not.
For any topic maps project, insist on a requirements document.
A good requirements document results in accountability for both sides.
The client for specifying what was desired and being responsible for changes and their impacts. The topic map author for delivering on the terms and detail specified in the requirements document.
Articulating Your Content Strategy Like A Child’s Story Book by Michael Brito.
From the post:
I used to read “Love You Forever” to both of my girls when they were little. Even thinking about it today, I still get choked up. It’s really a heartfelt story. What I remember the most about it is that it uses imagery to tell a very significant story (as with most children’s books). The story is about a mother’s unconditional love for her son; and then chronicles her son’s life growing to an adult and starting his own family. The sad conclusion shows how he reciprocates his love to his mother who has grown to be an elderly woman. There are just a few sentences on each page but the story and illustration is powerful and you can even follow along without even reading the text.
Michael makes a great case for visual storytelling and includes a Slideshare presentation by Stefanos Karagos to underline his point.
Before you view the slides!
Ask yourself what percent of users have a great experience with your product?
The slides reveal what percent of users share your opinion.
I doubt you have noticed that I am really a “text” sort of person. 😉
The lesson here isn’t any more foreign to you than it is to me.
But I think the author has a very good point, assuming our goal is to communicate with others.
Can’t communicate with others as we would like for them to be.
At least not successfully.
Ever caught a basketball? (Lot of basketball noise in the US right now.)
Or a baseball?
Played any other sport with a moving ball?
Your brain takes about 1/10 of a second to construct a perception of reality.
At 10 MPH, a ball moves 14.67 feet, while your brain creates a perception of its original location.
How did you catch the ball with your hands and not your face?
Mark Changizi has an answer to that question in: Why do we see illusions?.
The question Mark does not address: How does that relate to topic maps?
I can answer that with another question:
Does your topic map application communicate via telepathy or does it have an interface?
If you said it has an interface, understanding/experimenting with human perception is an avenue to create a useful and popular topic map interface.
You can also use the “works for our developers” approach but I wouldn’t recommend it.
About Mark Changizi:
Mark Changizi is a theoretical neurobiologist aiming to grasp the ultimate foundations underlying why we think, feel, and see as we do. His research focuses on “why” questions, and he has made important discoveries such as why we see in color, why we see illusions, why we have forward-facing eyes, why the brain is structured as it is, why animals have as many limbs and fingers as they do, why the dictionary is organized as it is, why fingers get pruney when wet, and how we acquired writing, language, and music.
Leading People to Longer Queries by Elena Agapie, Gene Golovchinsky, Pernilla Qvarfordt.
Abstract:
Although longer queries can produce better results for information seeking tasks, people tend to type short queries. We created an interface designed to encourage people to type longer queries, and evaluated it in two Mechanical Turk experiments. Results suggest that our interface manipulation may be effective for eliciting longer queries.
The researchers encouraged longer queries by varying a halo around the search box.
Not conclusive but enough evidence to ask the questions:
What does your search interface encourage?
What other ways could you encourage query construction?
How would you encourage graph queries?
I first saw this in a tweet by Gene Golovchinsky.
Studying PubMed usages in the field for complex problem solving: Implications for tool design by Barbara Mirel, Jennifer Steiner Tonks, Jean Song, Fan Meng, Weijian Xuan, Rafiqa Ameziane. (Mirel, B., Tonks, J. S., Song, J., Meng, F., Xuan, W. and Ameziane, R. (2013), Studying PubMed usages in the field for complex problem solving: Implications for tool design. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.. doi: 10.1002/asi.22796)
Abstract:
Many recent studies on MEDLINE-based information seeking have shed light on scientists’ behaviors and associated tool innovations that may improve efficiency and effectiveness. Few, if any, studies, however, examine scientists’ problem-solving uses of PubMed in actual contexts of work and corresponding needs for better tool support. Addressing this gap, we conducted a field study of novice scientists (14 upper-level undergraduate majors in molecular biology) as they engaged in a problem-solving activity with PubMed in a laboratory setting. Findings reveal many common stages and patterns of information seeking across users as well as variations, especially variations in cognitive search styles. Based on these findings, we suggest tool improvements that both confirm and qualify many results found in other recent studies. Our findings highlight the need to use results from context-rich studies to inform decisions in tool design about when to offer improved features to users.
From the introduction:
For example, our findings confirm that additional conceptual information integrated into retrieved results could expedite getting to relevance. Yet—as a qualification—evidence from our field cases suggests that presentations of this information need to be strategically apportioned and staged or they may inadvertently become counterproductive due to cognitive overload.
Curated data raises its ugly head, again.
Topic maps curate data and search results.
Search engines don’t curate data or search results.
How important is it for your doctor to find the right answers? In a timely manner?
They exist in theory at this point and I would like to see that change. But I don’t know how.
Here are three examples of addictive forums:
Y Hacker News: It has default settings to keep you from spending too much time on the site.
Facebook: Different in organization and theme from Y Hacker News.
Stack Overflow: Different from the other two but also qualifies as addictive.
There are others but those represent a range of approaches that have produced addictive forums.
I’m not looking for a “smoking gun” sort of answer but some thoughts on what lessons these sites have for creating other sites.
Not just for use in creating a topic map forum but for creating topic map powered information resources that have those same characteristics.
An addictive information service would quite a marketing coup.
Some information resource interfaces are better than others but I have yet to see one I would voluntarily seek out just for fun.
From the webpage:
Inspired by twitter.com‘s autocomplete search functionality, typeahead.js is a fast and fully-featured autocomplete library.
…
Features
- Displays suggestions to end-users as they type
- Shows top suggestion as a hint (i.e. background text)
- Works with hardcoded data as well as remote data
- Rate-limits network requests to lighten the load
- Allows for suggestions to be drawn from multiple datasets
- Supports customized templates for suggestions
- Plays nice with RTL languages and input method editors
Why not use X?
At the time Twitter was looking to implement a typeahead, there wasn’t a solution that allowed for prefetching data, searching that data on the client, and then falling back to the server. It’s optimized for quickly indexing and searching large datasets on the client. That allows for sites without datacenters on every continent to provide a consistent level of performance for all their users. It plays nicely with Right-To-Left (RTL) languages and Input Method Editors (IMEs). We also needed something instrumented for comprehensive analytics in order to optimize relevance through A/B testing. Although logging and analytics are not currently included, it’s something we may add in the future.
A bit on the practical side for me, ;-), but I can think of several ways that autocompletion could be useful with a topic map interface.
Not just the traditional completion of a search term or phrase but offering possible roles for subjects already in a map and other uses.
If experience with XML and OpenOffice is any guide, the easier authoring becomes (assuming the authoring outcome is useful), the greater the adoption of topic maps.
It really is that simple.
I first saw this at: typeahead.js : Fully-featured jQuery Autocomplete Library.
Why Business Intelligence Software Is Failing Business
From the post:
Business intelligence software is supposed to help businesses access and analyze data and communicate analytics and metrics. I have witnessed improvements to BI software over the years, from mobile and collaboration to interactive discovery and visualization, and our Value Index for Business Intelligence finds a mature set of technology vendors and products. But even as these products mature in capabilities, the majority lack features that would make them easy to use. Our recent research on next-generation business intelligence found that usability is the most important evaluation criteria for BI technology, outpacing functionality (49%) and even manageability (47%). The pathetic state of dashboards and the stupidity of KPI illustrate some of the obvious ways the software needs to improve for businesses to gain the most value from it. We need smarter business intelligence, and that means not just more advanced sets of capabilities that are designed for the analysts, but software designed for those who need to use BI information.
Our research finds the need to collaborate and share (67%) and inform and deliver (61%) are in the top five evaluation categories for software. A few communication improvements, highlighted below, would help organizations better utilize analytics and BI information.
Imagine that, usability is ahead of functionality.
Successful semantic software vendors will draw several lessons from this post.
International Symposium on Native XML user interfaces
This came across the wire this morning and I need your help interpreting it.
Why would you want to have an interface to XML?
All these years I have been writing XML in Emacs because XML wasn’t supposed to have an interface.
Brave hearts, male, female and unknown, struggling with issues too obscure for mere mortals.
Now I find that isn’t supposed to be so? You can imagine my reaction.
I moved my laptop a bit closer to the peat fire to make sure I read it properly. Waiting for the ox cart later this week to take my complaint to the local bishop about this disturbing innovation.
😉
15 March 2013 — Peer review applications due
19 April 2013 — Paper submissions due
19 April 2013 — Applications due for student support awards due
21 May 2013 — Speakers notified
12 July 2013 — Final papers due
5 August 2013 — International Symposium on Native XML user interfaces
6–9 August 2013 — Balisage: The Markup Conference
International Symposium on
Native XML user interfacesMonday August 5, 2013 Hotel Europa, Montréal, Canada
XML is everywhere. It is created, gathered, manipulated, queried, browsed, read, and modified. XML systems need user interfaces to do all of these things. How can we make user interfaces for XML that are powerful, simple to use, quick to develop, and easy to maintain?
How are we building user interfaces today? How can we build them tomorrow? Are we using XML to drive our user interfaces? How?
This one-day symposium is devoted to the theory and practice of user interfaces for XML: the current state of implementations, practical case studies, challenges for users, and the outlook for the future development of the technology.
Relevant topics include:
- Editors customized for specific purposes or users
- User interfaces for creation, management, and use of XML documents
- Uses of XForms
- Making tools for creation of XML textual documents
- Using general-purpose user-interface libraries to build XML interfaces
- Looking at XML, especially looking at masses of XML documents
- XML, XSLT, and XQuery in the browser
- Specialized user interfaces for specialized tasks
- XML vocabularies for user-interface specification
Presentations can take a variety of forms, including technical papers, case studies, and tool demonstrations (technical overviews, not product pitches).
This is the same conference I wrote about in: Markup Olympics (Balisage) [No Drug Testing].
In times of lean funding for conferences, if you go to a conference this year, it really should be Balisage.
You will be the envy of your co-workers and have tales to tell your grandchildren.
Not bad for one conference registration fee.
NBA Stats Like Never Before by Timo Elliott.
From the post:
The National Baseball Association today unveiled a new site for fans of games statistics: NBA.com/stats, powered by SAP Analytics technology. The multi-year marketing partnership between SAP and the NBA was announced six months ago:
“We are constantly researching new and emerging technologies in an effort to provide our fans with new ways to connect with our game,” said NBA Commissioner David Stern. “SAP is a leader in providing innovative software solutions and an ideal partner to provide a dynamic and comprehensive statistical offering as fans interact with NBA basketball on a global basis.”
“SAP is honored to partner with the NBA, one of the world’s most respected sports organizations,” said Bill McDermott, co-CEO, SAP. “Through SAP HANA, fans will be able to experience the NBA as never before. This is a slam dunk for SAP, the NBA and the many fans who will now have access to unprecedented insight and analysis.”
The free database contains every box score of every game played since the league’s inception in 1946, including graphical displays of players shooting tendencies.
To the average fan NBA.com/Stats delivers information that is of immediate interest to them, not their computers.
Another way to think about it:
Computers don’t make purchasing decisions, users do.
Something to think about when deciding on your next semantic technology.
Designing to Reward our Tribal Sides by Nir Eyal.
From the post:
We are a species of beings that depend on one another. Scientists theorize humans have specially adapted neurons that help us feel what others feel, providing evidence that we survive through our empathy for others. We’re meant to be part of a tribe and our brains seek out rewards that make us feel accepted, important, attractive, and included.
Many of our institutions and industries are built around this need for social reinforcement. From civic and religious groups to spectator sports, the need to feel social connectedness informs our values and drives much of how we spend our time.
Communication technology in particular has given rise to a long history of companies that have provided better ways of delivering what I call, “rewards of the tribe.”
However, it’s not only the reward we seek. Variability also keeps us engaged. From the telegraph to email, products that connect us are highly valued, but those that invoke an element of surprise are even more so. Recently, the explosion of Web technologies that cater to our insatiable search for validation provides clear examples of the tremendous appeal of the promise of social reward.
Do you capture the Stack Overflow lesson in your UI?
UI design that builds on and rewards our hard wiring seems like a good idea to me.
Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society
From the focus and scope statement for the journal:
SIe-L , Italian e-Learning Association, is a non-profit organization who operates as a non-commercial entity to promote scientific research and testing best practices of e-Learning and Distance Education. SIe-L consider these subjects strategic for citizen and companies for their instruction and education.
I encountered this journal while chasing a paper about topic maps in education to ground.
I have only started to explore but definitely a resource for anyone interested in the exploding on-line education market.
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