Robert Capra

Factors mediating disclosure in social network sites

In this paper, we explore how privacy settings and privacy policy consumption (reading the privacy policy) affect the relationship between privacy attitudes and disclosure behaviors. We present results from a survey completed by 122 users of Facebook regarding their information disclosure practices and their attitudes about privacy. Based on our data, we develop and evaluate a model for understanding factors that affect how privacy attitudes influence disclosure and discuss implications for social network sites. Our analysis shows that the relationship between privacy attitudes and certain types of disclosures (those furthering contact) are controlled by privacy policy consumption and privacy behaviors. This provides evidence that social network sites could help mitigate concerns about disclosure by providing transparent privacy policies and privacy controls.

What do exploratory searchers look at in a faceted search interface

This study examined how searchers interacted with a web-based, faceted library catalog when conducting exploratory searches. It applied eye tracking, stimulated recall interviews, and direct observation to investigate important aspects of gaze behavior in a faceted search interface: what components of the interface searchers looked at, for how long, and in what order. It yielded empirical data that will be useful for both practitioners (e.g., for improving search interface designs), and researchers (e.g., to inform models of search behavior). Results of the study show that participants spent about 50 seconds per task looking at (fixating on) the results, about 25 seconds looking at the facets, and only about 6 seconds looking at the query itself. These findings suggest that facets played an important role in the exploratory search process.

Using Web search engines to find and refind information

To inform the design of next-generation Web search tools, researchers must better understand how users find, manage, and refind online information. Synthesizing results from one of their studies with related work, the authors propose a search engine use model based on prior task frequency and familiarity.

Effects of structure and interaction style on distinct search tasks

In this paper we present the results of a study that investigates the relationships between search tasks, information architecture, and interaction style. Three kinds of search tasks (simple lookup, complex lookup and exploratory) were performed using three different user interfaces (standard web site, hierarchical text-based faceted interface, and dynamic query faceted interface) for a large-scale public corpus containing semi-structured statistical data and reports. Twenty-eight people conducted the three kinds of searches in a between-subjects study and twelve others conducted the three kinds of searches on all three systems in a within-subjects study. Quantitative results demonstrate that the alternative general-purpose user interfaces that accept automated structuring of data offer comparable effectiveness, efficiency, and aesthetics to manually constructed architectures. Qualitative results demonstrate the manual architectures are favored.

The relation browser tool for faceted exploratory search

The Relation Browser (RB) is a tool developed by the Interaction Design Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for understanding relationships between items in a collection and for exploring an information space (e.g., a set of documents or webpages). The RB has been through a number of major design revisions. At JCDL 2007, we reported on two studies of information seeking that we conducted using the RB++ version of the Relation Browser software. Based on the results of those studies, we developed a set of design changes and implemented these in a new version called RB07. We will demonstrate the new RB07 interface and describe the rationale for our design changes.

Mixed-initiative interaction = mixed computation

We show that partial evaluation can be usefully viewed as a programming model for realizing mixed-initiative functionality in interactive applications. Mixed-initiative interaction between two part...

WebContext: remote access to shared context

In this paper, we describe a system and architecture for building and remotely accessing shared context between a user and a computer. The system is designed to allow a user to browse web pages on a personal computer and then remotely make queries about information seen on the web pages using a telephone-based voice user interface.

Influence of training and stage of search on gaze behavior in a library catalog faceted search interface

This study examined how searchers interact with a web-based, faceted library catalog when conducting exploratory searches. It appliedmultiple methods, including eye tracking and stimulated recall interviews, to investigate important aspects of faceted search interface use, specifically: (a) searcher gaze behavior--what components of the interface searchers look at; (b) how gaze behavior differs when training is and is not provided; (c) how gaze behavior changes as searchers become familiar with the interface; and (d) how gaze behavior differs depending on the stage of the search process. The results confirm previous findings that facets account for approximately 10-30% of interface use. They show that providing a 60-second video demonstration increased searcher use of facets. However, searcher use of the facets did not evolve during the study session, which suggests that searchers may not, on their own, rapidly apply the faceted interfaces. The findings also suggest that searcher use of interface elements varied by the stage of their search during the session, with higher use of facets during decision-making stages. These findings will be of interest to librarians and interface designers who wish to maximize the value of faceted searching for patrons, as well as to researchers who study search behavior.

NSF workshop on task-based information search systems

This workshop gathered leading researchers in information retrieval, human-computer interaction and information behavior to discuss challenges and opportunities associated with the development of systems and tools to support people involved with complex, multi-search and multi-session search tasks. Such task-based search systems present many challenges and the goal of this workshop was to enumerate, discuss, and document these challenges into a research agenda to guide future research. This article includes a description of the motivations and goals of the workshop and syntheses of major workshop activities including pre- workshop identification of challenges by each participant and discussion breakout groups. Major themes of the workshop included the development of domain-neutral modeling techniques to represent tasks, task properties and task-related search behaviors, interface support tools to assist with a variety of task-related information behaviors and the identification of techniques and tools to evaluate task-based search systems. The most critical need identified was the development of task models; this was viewed as essential for addressing the challenges of tools and evaluation measures.

Selection and context scoping for digital video collections: an investigation of youtube and blogs

Digital curators are faced with decisions about what part of the ever-growing, ever-evolving space of digital information to collect and preserve. The recent explosion of web video on sites such as YouTube presents curators with an even greater challenge - how to sort through and filter a large amount of information to find, assess and ultimately preserve important, relevant, and interesting video. In this paper, we describe research conducted to help inform digital curation of on-line video. Since May 2007, we have been monitoring the results of 57 queries on YouTube related to the 2008 U.S. presidential election. We report results comparing these data to blogs that point to candidate videos on YouTube and discuss the effects of query-based harvesting as a collection development strategy.