An Empirical Study of User Navigation during Document Triage

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενοDocument triage is the moment in the information seeking process when the user first decides the relevance of a document to their information need[17]. This paper reports a study of user behaviour during document triage. The study reveals two main findings: first, that there is a small set of common navigational patterns; second, that certain document features strongly influence users’ navigation

Visual analysis of document triage data

As part of the information seeking process, a large amount of effort is invested in order to study and understand how information seekers search through documents such that they can assess their relevance. This search and assessment of document relevance, known as document triage, is an important information seeking process, but is not yet well understood. Human-computer interaction (HCI) and digital library scientists have undertaken a series of user studies involving information seeking, collected a large amount of data describing information seekers' behavior during document search. Next to this, we have witnessed a rapid increase in the number of off-the-shelf visualization tools which can benefit document triage study. Here we set out to utilize existing information visualization techniques and tools in order to gain a better understanding of the large amount of user-study data collected by HCI and digital library researchers. We describe the range of available tools and visualizations we use in order to increase our knowledge of document triage. Treemap, parallel coordinates, stack graph, matrix chart, as well as other visualization methods, prove to be insightful in exploring, analyzing and presenting user behavior during document triage. Our findings and visualizations are evaluated by HCI and digital library researchers studying this proble

An exploration of ebook selection behavior in academic library collections

Academic libraries have offered ebooks for some time, however little is known about how readers interact with them while making relevance decisions. In this paper we seek to address that gap by analyzing ebook transaction logs for books in a university library

Judging a book by its cover: interface elements that affect reader selection of ebooks

Digital library research has demonstrated the impact of content presentation on both search and reading behaviours. In this paper, we scrutinise the influence of ebook presentation on user behaviour, focussing on document thumbnails and the first page view. We demonstrate that flaws in presentation increase the volume of short time-span reading, and reduce the likelihood of long-span reading when compared to other documents. This reflects other patterns of information seeking behaviour that demonstrate increased short-term reading when information content is uncertain, and suggests an ineffective use of reader time on less useful content

Understanding and conceptualising the document triage process through information seekers' visual and navigational attention

Information, is a valuable commodity and its effective use is a vital part of everyday life. With the advancements of the internet and the increasing accessibility to it, the location of information is no longer the primary concern of information seekers. Digitisation techniques have made a wide variety of documents available on-line, and more and more publications are being published in electronic form simultaneously to their physical counterpart. The largest challenge currently facing information seekers is that of locating the correct information from the abundance available to them. Whenever a search query is made, the user is inundated with multiple options of documents to choose from. These documents are all deemed to have some relevance to the query produced by using an information retrieval algorithm. Thus far, automatic support has only been provided until the document retrieval level. The user is then left to search through the result set, mostly unaided, by the system he is using. In order to facilitate support for the users, a solid understanding of the information seeker's behaviours during this triage process is vital. Thus far, research into the behaviour of information seekers during the specific triage behaviour is limited. Even more limited however, is the evidence reporting the visual attention of the users. Since the triage process is highly visual, this important element need to be thoroughly evidence before accurately conceptualising the entire process. For this reason, this thesis aims to investigate the visual attention of information seekers during the document triage process. This will inform the modelling and conceptualisation of information seekers' behaviour during triage. In turn, this can be used to inform the design of supportive software. The thesis contains a review of related research and identifies the gaps that needs further investigation. From these, a series of user studies are then conducted on document triage. These in turn, facilitate the formulation and discussion of 2 document triage models and measurements to record the effectiveness of document triage. We study the visual attention of information seekers in four lab based studies, eliciting their exact gaze and focus details. We expand current research in the information seeking domain by reporting on findings from users' triage activities on small screen devices and when under time constraints. Furthermore, a high level diary study, gives us richer data on participants' triage activities over a larger period of time in their natural surroundings. All the studies are brought together to elicit requirements and measurements to understand system and user efficiency during each stage of the triage process

How to take a book off the shelf: Learning about ebooks from using a physical library

Little is known about how people select ebooks or books. This paper reports initial results of a study in which we observe patrons of two libraries when selecting books. From the results of the study we aim to gain insights into book selection strategies, which may be used to support ebook selection and purchasing

Ontology-Driven Search and Triage: Design of a Web-Based Visual Interface for MEDLINE

Background: Diverse users need to search health and medical literature to satisfy open-ended goals such as making evidence-based decisions and updating their knowledge. However, doing so is challenging due to at least two major difficulties: (1) articulating information needs using accurate vocabulary and (2) dealing with large document sets returned from searches. Common search interfaces such as PubMed do not provide adequate support for exploratory search tasks. Objective: Our objective was to improve support for exploratory search tasks by combining two strategies in the design of an interactive visual interface by (1) using a formal ontology to help users build domain-specific knowledge and vocabulary and (2) providing multi-stage triaging support to help mitigate the information overload problem. Methods: We developed a Web-based tool, Ontology-Driven Visual Search and Triage Interface for MEDLINE (OVERT-MED), to test our design ideas. We implemented a custom searchable index of MEDLINE, which comprises approximately 25 million document citations. We chose a popular biomedical ontology, the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO), to test our solution to the vocabulary problem. We implemented multistage triaging support in OVERT-MED, with the aid of interactive visualization techniques, to help users deal with large document sets returned from searches. Results: Formative evaluation suggests that the design features in OVERT-MED are helpful in addressing the two major difficulties described above. Using a formal ontology seems to help users articulate their information needs with more accurate vocabulary. In addition, multistage triaging combined with interactive visualizations shows promise in mitigating the information overload problem. Conclusions: Our strategies appear to be valuable in addressing the two major problems in exploratory search. Although we tested OVERT-MED with a particular ontology and document collection, we anticipate that our strategies can be transferred successfully to other contexts

Understanding and conceptualising the document triage process through information seekers' visual and navigational attention

Information is a valuable commodity and its effective use is a vital part of everyday life. With the advancements of the internet and the increasing accessibility to it, the location of information is no longer the primary concern of information seekers. Digitisation techniques have made a wide variety of documents available on-line, and more and more publications are being published in electronic form simultaneously to their physical counterpart. The largest challenge currently facing information seekers is that of locating the correct information from the abundance available to them. Whenever a search query is made, the user is inundated with multiple options of documents to choose from. These documents are all deemed to have some relevance to the query produced by using an information retrieval algorithm. Thus far, automatic support has only been provided until the document retrieval level. The user is then left to search through the result set, mostly unaided, by the system he is using. In order to facilitate support for the users, a solid understanding of the information seeker's behaviours during this triage process is vital. Thus far, research into the behaviour of information seekers during the specific triage behaviour is limited. Even more limited however, is the evidence reporting the visual attention of the users. Since the triage process is highly visual, this important element needs to be thoroughly evidenced before accurately conceptualising the entire process. For this reason, this thesis aims to investigate the visual attention of information seekers during the document triage process. This will inform the modelling and conceptualisation of information seekers' behaviour during triage. In turn, this can be used to inform the design of supportive software. The thesis contains a review of related research and identifies the gaps that needs further investigation. From these, a series of user studies are then conducted on document triage. These in turn, facilitate the formulation and discussion of 2 document triage models and measurements to record the effectiveness of document triage. We study the visual attention of information seekers in four lab based studies, eliciting their exact gaze and focus details. We expand current research in the information seeking domain by reporting on findings from users' triage activities on small screen devices and when under time constraints. Furthermore, a high level diary study, gives us richer data on participants' triage activities over a larger period of time in their natural surroundings. All the studies are brought together to elicit requirements and measurements to understand system and user efficiency during each stage of the triage process.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo