Elaine G. Toms

Understanding and facilitating the browsing of electronic text

Browsing tends to be used in two distinctive ways, alternatively associated with the goal of the activity and with the method by which the goal is achieved. In this study, the definition of browsing combines aspects of both concepts to define browsing as an activity in which one gathers information while scanning an information space without an explicit purpose. The objective of this research was to examine how browsers interact with their browsing environment while manipulating two types of interface tools constructed from the content.Forty-seven adults (24 males) performed the two types of tasks (one with no purpose and the second, a control, purposeful) in four sessions over a period of four weeks. Participants scanned and/or searched the textual content of current issue plus three months of back issues of the Halifax Chronicle Herald/Mail Star using a system designed specifically for this research. At any one time only one of each type of tool was available.Those with no assigned goal examined significantly more articles and explored more menu options. They made quick decisions about which articles to examine, spending twice as much time reading the content. They tended not to explore the newspaper to a great extent, examining only 24% of the articles in a single issue. About three-quarters of what they examined was new information on topics that they had not known about before being exposed to the paper. The type of menu had no impact on performance, but differences were discovered between the two items-to-browse tools. Those with no goal selected more articles from the Suggestions and found more interesting articles when the Suggestions were available.

Information interaction: providing a framework for information architecture

Information interaction is the process that people use in interacting with the content of an information system. Information architecture is a blueprint and navigational aid to the content of information-rich systems. As such information architecture performs an important supporting role in information interactivity. This article elaborates on a model of information interactivity that crosses the no-mans land between user and computer articulating a model that includes user, content and system, illustrating the context for information architecture.

The impact of information architecture on academic web site usability

Recent studies of web‐site use indicate that people do not come to the web for an “experience”, they come for information. Yet, to date, web‐site design has been synonymous with the “look and feel” of a site overlooking the significance of a site’s information architecture. In this study, we assessed the effect of the information architecture of an academic web site: how information is categorised, labelled and presented, and how navigation and access are facilitated. Twenty‐four participants from six faculties attempted to answer typical questions often asked within an academic milieu. They were able to find the answers to just over half the questions successfully and, in subjective assessments, gave the site a failing grade. We address how the information architecture affected their ability to negotiate the site and, additionally, make recommendations for the key ingredients: information design, access tools, and navigational aids.

Examining the generalizability of the User Engagement Scale (UES) in exploratory search

The user experience is an integral component of interactive information retrieval (IIR). However, there is a twofold problem in its measurement. Firstly, while many IIR studies have relied on a single dimension of user feedback, that of satisfaction, experience is a much more complex concept. IIR in general, and exploratory search more specifically, are dynamic, multifaceted experiences that evoke pragmatic and hedonic needs, expectations, and outcomes that are not adequately captured by user satisfaction. Secondly, questionnaires, which are typically the means in which users attitudes and perceptions are measured, are not typically subjected to rigorous reliability and validity testing. To address these issues, we administered the multidimensional User Engagement Scale (UES) in an exploratory search environment to assess users perceptions of the Perceived Usability (PUs), Aesthetics (AE), Novelty (NO), Felt Involvement (FI), Focused Attention (FA), and Endurability (EN) aspects of the experience. In a typical laboratory-style study, 381 participants performed three relatively complex search tasks using a novel search interface, and responded to the UES immediately upon completion. We used Principal Axis Factor Analysis and Multiple Regression to examine the factor structure of UES items and the relationships amongst factors. Results showed that three of the six sub-scales (PUs, AE, FA) were stable, while NO, FI and EN merged to form a single factor. We discuss recommendations for revising and validating the UES in light of these findings.

The effect of speech recognition accuracy rates on the usefulness and usability of webcast archives

The widespread availability of broadband connections has led to an increase in the use of Internet broadcasting (webcasting). Most webcasts are archived and accessed numerous times retrospectively. In the absence of transcripts of what was said, users have difficulty searching and scanning for specific topics. This research investigates user needs for transcription accuracy in webcast archives, and measures how the quality of transcripts affects user performance in a question-answering task, and how quality affects overall user experience. We tested 48 subjects in a within-subjects design under 4 conditions: perfect transcripts, transcripts with 25% Word Error Rate (WER), transcripts with 45% WER, and no transcript. Our data reveals that speech recognition accuracy linearly influences both user performance and experience, shows that transcripts with 45% WER are unsatisfactory, and suggests that transcripts having a WER of 25% or less would be useful and usable in webcast archives.

How consumers search for health information.

To date most of the research concerning consumer health information has focused on trust and quality of health information websites. In this research, we observed 48 consumers searching for four health-related topics (some of their own choosing) using Google. Using transaction logs, video screen capture, retrospective verbal protocols and self-reported questionnaires, we examined holistically the consumers search process. Results indicate significant problems in query formulation and in making efficient selections from results lists.

Modeling task-genre relationships for IR in the workplace

Context influences the search process, but to date research has not definitively identified which aspects of context are the most influential for information retrieval, and thus are worthy of integration in todays retrieval systems. In this research, we isolated for examination two aspects of context: task and document genre and examined the relationship between them within a software engineering work domain. In this domain, the nature of the task has an impact on decisions of relevance and usefulness, and the document collection contains a distinctive set of genre. Our data set was a document repository created and used by our target population. The document surrogates were meta-tagged by purpose and document type. Correspondence analysis of this categorical data identified some specific relationships between genres and tasks, as well as four broad dimensions of variability underlying these relationships. These results have the potential to inform the design of a contextual retrieval system by refining search results for this domain.

Modeling the Information Behaviour of Software Engineers Using a Work-Task Framework

Faced with the rapid proliferation of digital information resources within organizations, employees need targeted search systems in order to be effective in their jobs. The goal of this study is to develop a model of information behaviour within a work-task framework that can be used to inform the design of a workplace information search system. In a two-phase process, we conducted a series of studies using multiple methods to identify workplacencharacteristics and to understand how they influence the needs, search strategies, and information sources used by software engineers working as services consultants in a large high-tech company.

Understanding the information and communication technology needs of the e‐humanist

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to understand the needs of humanists with respect to information and communication technology (ICT) in order to prescribe the design of an e‐humanists workbench.Design/methodology/approach – A web‐based survey comprising over 60 questions gathered the following data from 169 humanists: profile of the humanist, use of ICT in teaching, e‐texts, text analysis tools, access to and use of primary and secondary sources, and use of collaboration and communication tools.Findings – Humanists conduct varied forms of research and use multiple techniques. They rely on the availability of inexpensive, quality‐controlled e‐texts for their research. The existence of primary sources in digital form influences the type of research conducted. They are unaware of existing tools for conducting text analyses, but expressed a need for better tools. Search engines have replaced the library catalogue as the key access tool for sources. Research continues to be solitary with little collabor...

Genre as interface metaphor: exploiting form and function in digital environments

Hypothesises that the attributes of a documents genre determine a documents ability to be identified uniquely. Consequently, recognizing the genre will facilitate effective user-document interaction. In this pilot study, we exposed 15 participants to a set of paper and digital documents, each converted into two surrogates: one based on form, in which the text was masked, leaving only the structure, and another on function, which reduced the document to its semantic content. Our findings indicate that the form attributes of a genre play a significant role in the identification of corresponding documents, and suggest that genre can potentially serve as an interface metaphor.