Mira Dontcheva

Example-centric programming: integrating web search into the development environment

The ready availability of online source-code examples has fundamentally changed programming practices. However, current search tools are not designed to assist with programming tasks and are wholly separate from editing tools. This paper proposes that embedding a task-specific search engine in the development environment can significantly reduce the cost of finding information and thus enable programmers to write better code more easily. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of Blueprint, a Web search interface integrated into the Adobe Flex Builder development environment that helps users locate example code. Blueprint automatically augments queries with code context, presents a code-centric view of search results, embeds the search experience into the editor, and retains a link between copied code and its source. A comparative laboratory study found that Blueprint enables participants to write significantly better code and find example code significantly faster than with a standard Web browser. Analysis of three months of usage logs with 2,024 users suggests that task-specific search interfaces can significantly change how and when people search the Web.

Generating photo manipulation tutorials by demonstration

We present a demonstration-based system for automatically generating succinct step-by-step visual tutorials of photo manipulations. An author first demonstrates the manipulation using an instrumented version of GIMP that records all changes in interface and application state. From the example recording, our system automatically generates tutorials that illustrate the manipulation using images, text, and annotations. It leverages automated image labeling (recognition of facial features and outdoor scene structures in our implementation) to generate more precise text descriptions of many of the steps in the tutorials. A user study comparing our automatically generated tutorials to hand-designed tutorials and screen-capture video recordings finds that users are 20--44% faster and make 60--95% fewer errors using our tutorials. While our system focuses on tutorial generation, we also present some initial work on generating content-dependent macros that use image recognition to automatically transfer selection operations from the example image used in the demonstration to new target images. While our macros are limited to transferring selection operations we demonstrate automatic transfer of several common retouching techniques including eye recoloring, whitening teeth and sunset enhancement.

Pause-and-play: automatically linking screencast video tutorials with applications

Video tutorials provide a convenient means for novices to learn new software applications. Unfortunately, staying in sync with a video while trying to use the target application at the same time requires users to repeatedly switch from the application to the video to pause or scrub backwards to replay missed steps. We present Pause-and-Play, a system that helps users work along with existing video tutorials. Pause-and-Play detects important events in the video and links them with corresponding events in the target application as the user tries to replicate the depicted procedure. This linking allows our system to automatically pause and play the video to stay in sync with the user. Pause-and-Play also supports convenient video navigation controls that are accessible from within the target application and allow the user to easily replay portions of the video without switching focus out of the application. Finally, since our system uses computer vision to detect events in existing videos and leverages application scripting APIs to obtain real time usage traces, our approach is largely independent of the specific target application and does not require access or modifications to application source code. We have implemented Pause-and-Play for two target applications, Google SketchUp and Adobe Photoshop, and we report on a user study that shows our system improves the user experience of working with video tutorials.

Summarizing personal web browsing sessions

We describe a system, implemented as a browser extension, that enables users to quickly and easily collect, view, and share personal Web content. Our system employs a novel interaction model, which allows a user to specify webpage extraction patterns by interactively selecting webpage elements and applying these patterns to automatically collect similar content. Further, we present a technique for creating visual summaries of the collected information by combining user labeling with predefined layout templates. These summaries are interactive in nature: depending on the behaviors encoded in their templates, they may respond to mouse events, in addition to providing a visual summary. Finally, the summaries can be saved or sent to others to continue the research at another place or time. Informal evaluation shows that our approach works well for popular websites, and that users can quickly learn this interaction model for collecting content from the Web.

Zoetrope: interacting with the ephemeral web

The Web is ephemeral. Pages change frequently, and it is nearly impossible to find data or follow a link after the underlying page evolves. We present Zoetrope, a system that enables interaction with the historicalWeb (pages, links, and embedded data) that would otherwise be lost to time. Using a number of novel interactions, the temporal Web can be manipulated, queried, and analyzed from the context of familar pages. Zoetrope is based on a set of operators for manipulating content streams. We describe these primitives and the associated indexing strategies for handling temporal Web data. They form the basis of Zoetrope and enable our construction of new temporal interactions and visualizations.

Discovery-based games for learning software

We propose using discovery-based learning games to teach people how to use complex software. Specifically, we developed Jigsaw, a learning game that asks players to solve virtual jigsaw puzzles using tools in Adobe Photoshop. We conducted an eleven-person lab study of the prototype, and found the game to be an effective learning medium that can complement demonstration-based tutorials. Not only did the participants learn about new tools and techniques while actively solving the puzzles in Jigsaw, but they also recalled techniques that they had learned previously but had forgotten.

Affective computational priming and creativity

While studies have shown that affect influences creativity, few investigate how affect influences creative performance with creativity support tools. Drawing from methods commonly used in psychology research, we present affective computational priming, a new method for manipulating affect using digitally embedded stimuli. We present two studies that explore computational techniques for inducing positive, neutral, and negative affect and examine their impact on idea generation with creativity support tools. Our results suggest that positive affective computational priming positively influences the quality of ideas generated. We discuss opportunities for future HCI research and offer practical applications of affective computational priming.

Relations, cards, and search templates: user-guided web data integration and layout

We present three new interaction techniques for aiding users in collecting and organizing Web content. First, we demonstrate an interface for creating associations between websites, which facilitate the automatic retrieval of related content. Second, we present an authoring interface that allows users to quickly merge content from many different websites into a uniform and personalized representation, which we call a card. Finally, we introduce a novel search paradigm that leverages the relationships in a card to direct search queries to extract relevant content from multiple Web sources and fill a new series of cards instead of just returning a list of webpage URLs. Preliminary feedback from users is positive andvalidates our design.

Writing Code to Prototype, Ideate, and Discover

People often write code to prototype, ideate, and discover. To do this, they work opportunistically, emphasizing speed and ease of development over code robustness and maintainability. Quickly hacking a program together can provide both practical and learning benefits for novices and experts: professional programmers and designers prototype to explore and communicate ideas, scientists program laboratory instruments, and entrepreneurs assemble complex spreadsheets to better understand their business. Their diverse activities share an emphasis on speed and ease of development over robustness and maintainability.

MatrixWave: Visual Comparison of Event Sequence Data

Event sequence data analysis is common in many domains, including web and software development, transportation, and medical care. Few have investigated visualization techniques for comparative analysis of multiple event sequence datasets. Grounded in the real-world characteristics of web clickstream data, we explore visualization techniques for comparison of two clickstream datasets collected on different days or from users with different demographics. Through iterative design with web analysts, we designed MatrixWave, a matrix-based representation that allows analysts to get an overview of differences in traffic patterns and interactively explore paths through the website. We use color to encode differences and size to offer context over traffic volume. User feedback on MatrixWave is positive. Our study participants made fewer errors with MatrixWave and preferred it over the more familiar Sankey diagram.