Context-based page unit recommendation for web-based sensemaking tasks

Authors:

Wen-Huang Cheng	National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan Roc
David Gotz	IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY, USA

Paper (pdf):
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1502650.1502668&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&type=series&idx=SERIES823&part=series&WantType=Proceedings&title=IUI&CFID=81639924&CFTOKEN=12013848

Summary:
This paper explores the authors program InsightFinder, a web tool that aides in connection discovery during sensemaking tasks, as well as provides details to the algorithm, interface, and user study behind it.

The program they developed is called The InsightFinder and is described as 'a smart web-browsing system that assists in connection discovery during sensemaking tasks by providing context-based page unit recommendations.' The sensemaking that they refer to is the process a user faces after they have selected a website such as from a browser query and they are scanning through the website to find the information that they were looking for and then connecting that information to other relevant data from other websites. One of the examples that they gave was someone who was relocating to a new city. Some of the things they might research is an apartment complex within their price range, relative location to a day care for their children, and also proximity to their place of work. Rather than have to search all of these out individually and accumulate a series of notes that illustrate all the different possible solutions the program InsightFinder would do this for you, linking these different websites together.

Below are the properties that a tool of this nature should have:

• Site Independence: A sensemaking tool must be independent of any specific site or content provider to allow cross-site connection discovery.
• Note-Taking Functionality: A sensemaking tool should allow for the collection of information fragments into a task-specific workspace to help users organize their findings across multiple sessions and sites.
• Assistance in Connection Discovery: Most critically, a sensemaking tool should assist the user in performing the difficult process of uncovering connections between their notes and what is currently being explored in their browser.

The authors went into detail describing the algorithm behind the program, and I've included an excerpt that briefly describes this.

The insight loop is
triggered directly through the InsightFinder interface,
which provides tools for users to record or organize their
notes. As the user’s notes evolve, the InsightFinder
maintains a context model which represents the user’s captured data. The exploration loop occurs while users
interact with the normal browser interface. As users
navigate the web, the InsightFinder performs a series of
steps each time a new page is visited. At the conclusion
of both loops, the InsightFinder provides a ranked list
of recommended web page fragments that are most relevant
to the content in the user’s notes. To provide this functionality, the architecture includes modules for interface management, content extraction, context model
management, page segmentation, and relevance computation.

Below is a screen shot of InsightFinder, followed by another illustrating the ability to take notes.

Figure 2. A screenshot of the InsightFinder system.

Figure 3. Users can record notes by dragging content
fragments (links, images, text, or entire pages) from the
browser to folders in the InsightFinder.

The last part of the paper went into detail describing the user study they performed and the results. Their program ran as a sidebar on mozilla firefox using XUL for the interface and java/javascript for the computational components. Overall their program was proved to work as it was suppose to and it did indeed improve sensemaking tasks by reducing the amount of time required to perform them, on average a reduction of 30 seconds. In their possible future work they mentioned extending the granularity of their node-weighing as well as improving the note taking capabilities.

Discussion:
The InsightFinder that the authors developed was a good novel program. I hadn't thought much of tools aiding in finding connections between websites based on notes and so forth. I have only ever used a search engine and trial and error to find more specifically what I was looking for. I think a program like this would be a good extension for web-browsers. It may not be used on a day-to-day basis but when doing things such as research I can see how this would come in handy, scanning an accumulation of notes to suggest/recommend websites to view.

Is the sky pure today? AwkChecker: an assistive tool for detecting and correcting collocation errors

Authors:

Taehyun Park	University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Edward Lank	University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Pascal Poupart	University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
Michael Terry	University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

Paper (Mov and Pdf):
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1449736&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=81067528&CFTOKEN=37358406&ret=1#Fulltext

Summary:
The purpose of this paper was to describe the AwkChecker program created by the authors that detects improper word phrases so that they can be replaced with the more commonly used phrases. In the paper these phrases are described as Collocation Preferences, which include such things as commonly used expressions, idioms, and word pairings. The goal for this program was to aide non-native speakers who would most likely encounter problems with these collocation preferences. The AwkChecker program works on the basis of a webbased text editor that flags collocation errors and suggests replacement phrases.

The paper also went into detail describing the language problems that Non Native Speakers (NNS) encounter as opposed to what Native Speakers generally encounter. One of the points they were trying to make with this is that the majority of English speakers, roughly 70%, are also NNS and as such there is a great demand in language tools to assist NNS. The authors created their program based on a guideline for NNS language tool design from Knutsson et al. Below is the guideline as described by this paper:

• Real-time feedback is always desirable, especially
  since it helps one improve one’s understanding of
  the language as it is produced
• Tools should not only indicate what is wrong, but
  also provide sufficient information (e.g.,
  examples, grammar rules, etc.) so that users can
  reason about the error and its solution
• The tool should be transparent with respect to its
  capabilities and limitations; users should
  understand what it can and cannot do
• The tool should not be too technical with its
  terminology and should avoid linguistic terms
• Users should be able to focus on producing
  content, not on low-level details such as spelling,
  grammar, etc. That is, the tool should not distract
  from their primary goal of communication

The paper goes on to describe L2 Error Detection Tools and L2 Tutoring Systems, citing many recent work in the fields. The last portion of the paper went into detail describing the functions and algorithms involved in the AwkChecker program.

Discussion:
The AwkChecker program seems like a great step forward in linguistic tools. As a native English speaker I generally don't encounter collocation errors but having worked with non native speakers I have seen the use for a program such as this. I think that a system like AwkChecker would be a great tool to use in any text editor, something to go with already existing tools like spelling and grammar checking.

An interface for targeted collection of common sense knowledge using a mixture model

Authors:

Robert Speer	MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, USA
Jayant Krishnamurthy	MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, USA
Catherine Havasi	Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA
Dustin Smith	MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA
Henry Lieberman	MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA
Kenneth Arnold	MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, USA

Summary:
This paper discusses a common sense knowledge gathering system constructed by the authors which is perceived as a 20 Questions type game while at the same time gathering information from its users. Below is an example of their program running:

Figure 1. Open Mind learns facts about the concept “microwave oven” from a session of 20 Questions.

The reason behind using a '20 Questions' game to collect this common sense knowledge is based on studies showing that users are not willing to freely contribute information unless they can be enticed somehow such as by entertainment. There have been some previous common sense acquisition games including Peekaboom and the ESP Game, both of which pitted two users against each other in an attempt to label images with the same description. The ESP Game focused primarily on generic labels for images while Peekaboom focused on particular components of images. There have also been a couple that work with matching phrases and words that generally correspond or describe each other, such as 'horse' and 'it has a hoof'. A couple examples of these games are Verbosity and Common Consensus.

The model that the authors used to collect common sense knowledge was built on a concept/relation representation similar to that of ConceptNet's data model. With these models they could determine certain 'features' which could simplify the algorithm in their 20 Questions game, where a features is described as 'A feature is a pairing of a concept with a relation which forms a complete assertion when combined with a concept.'. Through these features the authors were able to graphically show the AnalogySpace of these concepts and relations in a clustering model.

The authors also went into great detail in demonstrating equations and algorithms behind their common sense acquisition models. Below is another example of their game running:

Figure 3. Using the 20 Questions interface to develop a concept.

Later on in the paper they started to discuss some of the interface design objectives for their system. The primary goals are listed below:

• Feedback, in this case the authors want a system that will provide what the computer is currently thinking so that the user can see how their responses are directly affecting the computers deterministic approach.
• User Enjoyment, they just want the interface to be as enjoyable as possible to keep users interested in playing.
  
• Minimalism, the game shouldn't be a stand alone or stand out in any situation, but should be there when needed and run seamlessly with the website.
  
• Effortless Acquisition, in this case they don't want users to feel that they have to work at providing information, but instead it should appear 'effortless'.

A user study was done in which the authors presented an online comparison between the current manual OpenMind interface and the new designed 20 Questions. Users operated each system and afterward were asked a sample of questions to determine their enjoyment and the effectiveness of each system. The results of the study showed that the 20 Questions system out-performed the current OpenMind one on such fields as “I would use this system
again”, “I enjoyed this activity”, and “The system was adapting as I entered new information”. Apart from that the 20 Questions system took considerably less time to complete as seen in Figure 8.

Figure 7. The mean and SEM of the survey responses, grouped by test
condition.

Figure 8. Themean and SEMof the elapsed time to complete each task.

The results of their study and the conclusions they drew were that with this interface users will be more willing to contribute data, and that this will lead to better knowledge acquisition.

Discussion:
The overall point of this paper was that the authors designed a new interface for data acquisition to replace the current OpenMind one, and that their new system is based off of the '20 Questions' game. Despite this relatively simple point, they somehow found a way to express this through 10 pages. I did like that they modeled their system after a game, because it is quite normal to expect people to not want to contribute unless they can get something out of it, in this case some mild entertainment. Overall I did not find this paper interesting, but perhaps it has uses I can't foresee.

TypeRight: a Keyboard with Tactile Error Prevention

By Alexander Hoffmann, Daniel Spelmezan, Jan Borchers

Summary:

TYPERIGHT is a newly designed keyboard with pressurized key entry variable resistance that helps prevent users from entering keys that would lead to misspelled words or incorrect grammar. The authors goal was to implement a preventative method to incorrect typing that would hopefully increase the users efficiency in the long run compared to after-the-fact correction like spell checking and/or highlighting of possible mistakes. They compared their method to that of Apple's iPhone, in that like the iPhone's ability to minimize/enlarge keys to prevent mistyping, their keyboard would make keys harder to press that would lead to incorrect spelling or grammatical mistakes.

The actual design of the keyboard implemented solenoids that when activated created a magnetic resistance for their associated key. Therefore if a user tried to press a key that would lead to a mistake, he would face an increased resistance in the key. Below are a couple of screenshots showing the top layer of the keyboard, followed by a cut-out picture that shows the interaction of the solenoids.


Figure 1. TYPERIGHT: Full-keyboard prototype.



Figure 2. TYPERIGHT: Cross section of a key. The solenoid controls key resistance.

The authors conducted a user study in which they tested the performance of an after-the-fact correction method to their TYPERIGHT keyboard. In their study with novice users, the results showed that 'on average, the number of backspace key presses was reduced by 46% in the tactile feedback condition' and 'tactile feedback reduced the number of mistyped letters by 87%'. However in terms of efficiency the results showed that 'Average execution times were similar in both conditions (522 s with tactile feedback vs. 520 s with graphical feedback).' and 'Questionnaires confirmed that 75% of participants did not consider TYPERIGHT to be
a “big changeover compared to typing on a standard keyboard”'.

The authors also did one run with an expert user who had practiced the TYPERIGHT keyboard over a 3-month period and the results of his efficiency test were much better:
'The execution time with the first text was 10% faster than with the second text with graphical feedback. With tactile feedback activated, 16 corrections were necessary, compared to 23 corrections with graphical feedback (a 44% increase). With graphical feedback, the user typed 78 words that were not part of the dictionary, compared to zero(!) words with tactile feedback on the first text.' The authors indicated that this further confirms their indications that TYPERIGHT can effectively increase performance, but they also stated that they need further study with expert users to solidify their results.

Discussion:
Reading this paper made me think of the pressure sensitive keyboard from the UIST group. One of the major differences from this keyboard besides general function is that this one does not have a practical commercial model yet. Their design in this paper actually required a large modification to the keyboard in that they had to put solenoids between the keyboard and key caps for each key. One thing that wasn't covered in this paper was the comparison between TYPERIGHT and auto-correction, although the authors said that was a possibility for future work.

Effects of Real-time Transcription on Non-native Speaker’s Comprehension in Computer-mediated Communications

By Ying-xin Pan, Dan-ning Jiang, Michael Picheny, Yong Qin

Summary:

In this paper the performance of a non-native speaker's comprehension of communication with the help of real-time transcription was studied. The authors hypothesized that with the help of real-time transcription a user could better understand audio and audio/video communications if a real-time transcription was provided. They also looked to see if providing a transcription history instead of just 'line-by-line' would be more beneficial. The three questions they looked to answer in their study were:

1. Does real-time transcription help non-native speakers improve comprehension in multilingual communication utilizing audio and video conferencing systems?
2. How do users perceive real-time transcription in terms of usefulness, preferences and willingness to use such a feature if provided?
3. How do users allocate their cognitive resources when presented with multiple information sources?

They described their experiment as a 2x3 design, in that they tested two modalities ie audio and audio+video, and three transcription settings ie no transcription, streamed transcription, and stream transcription with history. They had 48 non-native English speaking students which they split up to evenly test their 2x3 design. For the communication examples they used small 3-5min English language clips followed by a timed question and answer session rounded off with a questionnaire.

The authors of this paper were looking to measure three qualities of the experience of the users, these being performance on the questions, confidence in their answers, user experience with the system, and cognitive resource allocation. The results of their study showed that transcription, 'had a significant main effect on both performance (F (2, 92) =11.28, p<.01) and confidence (F (2, 92) =13.69, p<.01)'. They also noted that providing a transcription history didn't really improve performance of the user. They also noted that performance and confidence on transcription was not affected by modality. The authors lastly stated that for possible future work they would like to investigate automated speech recognition '(with the associated imperfections) as a practical alternative to human transcriptionists'.

Discussion:
This paper pretty much demonstrated what I already thought was common knowledge. I think it is widely believed that if a user is listening to a non-native language communication that transcripted text would help their understanding. I mean, isn't that what subtitles are (although subtitles generally aren't real-time transcripted)? I think their study did have some small success to it; I didn't know that adding video to audio would not really aide the understanding and comprehension. I also thought it was interesting that even given the option to scroll transcription history the users did not really use it, the streaming transcription was sufficient.

The Inmates Are Running The Asylum (Chapters 1-7)

Summary:

This book has primarily been focused on interaction design. In these first few chapters several topics have been discussed related to this general theme including the encroachment of computers into all other devices, the struggle with interacting with computers, the value of interaction design on a company/market scale, the typical design problems in software and the development of software, the importance of interaction design to the success of a product, the influence of software engineers and their misguided mindset of design, and the psychology of the common computer programmer.

The author has used several analogies to illustrate his ideas, a very common one being his 'dancing bear' analogy. This 'dancing bear' illustrates a user's tolerance of bad quality design with the satisfaction of a software's primary purpose, ie the crappy dancing of the bear and the fact that a bear is able to dance all together. Another analogy that shares the title with this book is 'the inmates are running the asylum'. This is in reference to the fact that interaction design is generally left up to the software developers, and because of the influence of their decisions they are often left in charge of the outcome of a product albeit their lack of understanding the importance of design through every level of development.

In some of the latest chapters the author has included more and more excerpts from colleagues and friends who have had first hand experience with the need to invest in the importance of interaction design. Several of these cases were about a possible product that although was 'capable' and 'viable', lacked the 'desirable' trait that users value immensely. In these examples the companies that did not implement a strong sense of design either saw their product fall short of every being released or saw their product fall to the way side in the market by disloyal customers who switched to the competition's product.

Discussion:
So far this reading hasn't been too bad. It really follows in suit with the first book we read. I guess considering this class is based on interaction then that is most likely the content of all the books we will be reading. On a template scale though, this book is really similar to the prior; discussing interaction, the focus on the user, including several analogies and examples to illustrate their points, etc. I wonder if this book will conclude with how to incorporate good interaction design into software development, because so far it has only been highlighting the issues surrounding it. One last note that I want to add is that I think we should have read this book in its entirety instead of splitting it up. It took me about four hours to read these first seven chapters and if we have to wait three weeks to read the rest I'm going to have a hard time remembering all of this. Not to mention we are breaking it up with another book to read in between this one, which I foresee causing me to lose my grasp on the ideals of this book. Oh and another I particularly liked was his discussion about Microsoft, Apple, and Novell; there pros and cons as a business and the resulting status of where they are now because of their experiences.

Learning from IKEA Hacking: “Iʼm Not One to Decoupage a Tabletop and Call It a Day.”

By Daniela Rosner and Jonathan Bean

Comment:
Lupfer, Nicholas

Summary:

This paper discussed IKEA Hackers and the role the internet plays in their lives. IKEA Hackers are people who take the relatively cheap mass marketed IKEA furniture and customize it for personal use or for creative purposes. The authors of this paper interviewed several IKEA Hackers to understand what they do, why they do it, and how the internet and particular forums and webistes play a role. IKEA Hackers themselves are typically Do-It-Yourself (DIY) persons. They like to manipulate the already existing products to fit their wants. Not only does this give a more personal feel to the furniture they modify, but the act of hacking itself gives them an artistic and creative feel.

The larger part of this paper discussed how the internet influences IKEA Hackers. Although IKEA Hacking is generally a personal experience, a lot of the hackers like to post their ideas online for others to appreciate and learn from. Likewise these online resources serve for good ideas and starting points for other IKEA hackers to pick up the hobby. A couple of common websites used by IKEA Hackers are IKEAHacker.com and Instructables.com. Below is a picture of a typical IKEA Hacker's workspace:


Figure 2. A common site for IKEA hacking: a residential kitchen. IKEA cabinets are “hacked” through modifications or the addition of custom components. One participant blogged his kitchen remodeling project.

Discussion:

The main reason I read this paper is because IKEA Hacking was mentioned in my assigned reading. In the previous paper I read IKEA Hacking was mentioned as an example of sustainable interaction design in that the IKEA furniture was often used and modified for reuse by the user who inherently reflected the principles of an 'everyday designer' mentioned in the paper. This paper however was far less interesting than the first, and although it was short (preferable length), it relatively had very little content except for introducing the concept of an IKEA Hacker. IKEA Hacking is an interesting idea but an entire paper devoted to it with emphasis on how online resources are used felt unnecessary.