Nayuko Watanabe

Bubble clusters: an interface for manipulating spatial aggregation of graphical objects

Spatial layout is frequently used for managing loosely organized information, such as desktop icons and digital ink. To help users organize this type of information efficiently, we propose an interface for manipulating spatial aggregations of objects. The aggregated objects are automatically recognized as a group, and the group structure is visualized as a two-dimensional bubble surface that surrounds the objects. Users can drag, copy, or delete a group by operating on the bubble. Furthermore, to help pick out individual objects in a dense aggregation, the system spreads the objects to avoid overlapping when requested. This paper describes the design of this interface and its implementation. We tested our technique in icon grouping and ink relocation tasks and observed improvements in user performance.

Annotating knowledge work lifelog: term extraction from sensor and operation history

We present a system that supports review of a knowledge work lifelog as an activity history. Since knowledge workers often review their own activity histories, gathering each users activities on his/her terminal as a lifelog is a promising approach. However, readability of the stored lifelog is a large problem of lifelog-based application. We propose a term extraction method to add annotation labels to the stored lifelog for supporting knowledge workers, exploiting text data acquired from desktop activities. Our prototype system monitors a users desktop activities after combining raw events, and then extracts possible annotation labels with LDA and C-value techniques from documents and text data in sensor events. In this paper, we introduce a lifelogging module and a lifelog annotation method based on term extraction techniques. According to an empirical evaluation for three weeks, we found that the current method is useful for one-week review.

Designing mobile search interface with query term extraction

Web searching with mobile phones is still not as easy as with Personal Computers (PCs). To solve the problem, we proposed a one-touch search application using first query term extraction from browsed Web pages [1]. This paper reports on a preliminary experiment that we conducted with 50 subjects in order to design the interface of the application. The results of the experiment indicate that although providing query term candidates to users reduces the cost of query input, the complexity of the query input process poses a problem.

First query term extraction from current webpage for mobile applications

Inputting query terms on a mobile terminal is frustrating because of device limitations though mobile web search is becoming popular. Query prediction is a promising approach for mobile search. In the literature, however, little attention has been paid to the first query term, though there are many reports on query expansion or second query recommendation. In this paper, we propose a first query prediction method that enables users to search related information for the current browsed webpage with an easier interface such as touch operation without any background search processes. The proposed method consists of body-text extraction, candidate query term extraction, and a scoring process. We also implemented a one-touch search application that works for Japanese webpages at a practical speed on a smartphone. According to our closed evaluation with 299 webpages and open evaluation with 14 users, our method achieved practical quality.

Implementation of Automatic Captioning System to Enhance the Accessibility of Meetings

In terms of information accessibility tools for hearing-impaired people, in order to understand meetings, expectations for real-time captioning utilizing speech recognition technology are increasing, from manual handwritten abstracts. However, it is still difficult to provide automatic closed captioning with a practical level of accuracy stably, without regard to various speakers and content. Therefore, we develop a web-based real-time closed captioning system that is easy to use in contact conferences, lectures, forums, etc., through trial and feedback from hearing-impaired people in the company. In this report, we outline this system as well as the results of a simple evaluation conducted inside and outside the company.

Semi-automatic Evaluation System for Supporting Term Extraction Application Development

Important term extraction from the current web page is a common process in many client-based web applications such as query-free search, search query recommendation, information extraction, user profiling, and personalization. However, the tuning cost is large for deciding parameters when updating modules or dictionaries, or when porting an application for other languages or devices. We propose an evaluation system to collect web pages and corresponding correct data with visual check and automatic tuning of parameters. We confirmed the practicality of this system through the development and the two-month refinement of first query term extraction module.