A Study of Snippet Length and Informativeness: Behaviour, Performance and User Experience

The design and presentation of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) has been subject to much research. With many contemporary aspects of the SERP now under scrutiny, work still remains in investigating more traditional SERP components, such as the result summary. Prior studies have examined a variety of different aspects of result summaries, but in this paper we investigate the influence of result summary length on search behaviour, performance and user experience. To this end, we designed and conducted a within-subjects experiment using the TREC AQUAINT news collection with 53 participants. Using Kullback-Leibler distance as a measure of information gain, we examined result summaries of different lengths and selected four conditions where the change in information gain was the greatest: (i) title only; (ii) title plus one snippet; (iii) title plus two snippets; and (iv) title plus four snippets. Findings show that participants broadly preferred longer result summaries, as they were perceived to be more informative. However, their performance in terms of correctly identifying relevant documents was similar across all four conditions. Furthermore, while the participants felt that longer summaries were more informative, empirical observations suggest otherwise; while participants were more likely to click on relevant items given longer summaries, they also were more likely to click on non-relevant items. This shows that longer is not necessarily better, though participants perceived that to be the case - and second, they reveal a positive relationship between the length and informativeness of summaries and their attractiveness (i.e. clickthrough rates). These findings show that there are tensions between perception and performance when designing result summaries that need to be taken into account

Utilising gamification approaches to derive crowd pattern/crowd context from aerial images of major events

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesA large number of casualties occur during emergencies in highly-crowded public spaces of major events like annual anniversaries, religious festivals, big parties and football matches due to stampedes. It has been often observed that poor resource management is one of the key areas that could be improved to solve this problem. In this study,a geo-game-based approach has been adopted to alert responsible authorities of highly crowded regions as an early warning system and also provide them with optimal dispersal routes. In the Android-based game that was developed for this study, the players could draw polygons on real-time imageries of the area under study obtained from unmanned aerial vehicles and classify them into categories based on how crowded the region is. This data is submitted to a web server which is processed to find suitable least-cost routes by which the people in the crowded regions can be brought to safety in case of an emergency. The spatial distribution of people could be forwarded to appropriate authorities in-charge of the administration highlighting extremely crowded regions which need their attention thereby prompting redirection of security personnel. Additionally, the calculated dispersal routes could be used by them as suggestions to avoid a stampede and ensure safety in case the situation turns worse

The State of Algorithmic Fairness in Mobile Human-Computer Interaction

This paper explores the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) fairness and mobile human-computer interaction (MobileHCI). Through a comprehensive analysis of MobileHCI proceedings published between 2017 and 2022, we first aim to understand the current state of algorithmic fairness in the community. By manually analyzing 90 papers, we found that only a small portion (5%) thereof adheres to modern fairness reporting, such as analyses conditioned on demographic breakdowns. At the same time, the overwhelming majority draws its findings from highly-educated, employed, and Western populations. We situate these findings within recent efforts to capture the current state of algorithmic fairness in mobile and wearable computing, and envision that our results will serve as an open invitation to the design and development of fairer ubiquitous technologies.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2303.1558

The Future of the Academic Library Print Collection: A Space for Engagement

abstract: Academic libraries seek to engage people with information resources and maximize use of library spaces. When users increasingly rely on digital rather than print resources, libraries respond by shifting space usage from stacks to user working and reading spaces. How then do we, as academic library professionals, best keep print collections on public view and maximize user engagement? In this whitepaper, we focus on fostering engagement with print resources among\nlibrary users, particularly with open stack print collections and users within the local community. We advocate moving toward a more flexible, more user-focused service that makes library collections easier to understand and to use. Libraries need to work with their surrounding communities in the further development and presentation of their collections. We offer a flexible, a la carte approach to transforming open stack academic library print collection management. We have developed a three-tiered system of potential approaches and actions for academic libraries to foster engagement with their collections. We also include materials and tools to help guide individual libraries towards a data-driven approach to print curation that may be tailored to their local context. We hope that these approaches and tools aid academic libraries in helping users engage in meaningful dialogues with print resources. As part of a $50,000 planning grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the analysis is aimed at fostering engagement with print resources among library users, particularly with open stack print collections and users within the local community. "The Future of the Academic Library Print Collection: A Space for Engagement" explores a three-tiered system of potential approaches and actions for academic libraries to foster engagement with their collections, and includes materials and tools to help guide individual libraries towards a data-driven approach to print curation that may be tailored to their local context.This work was developed with generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

Studying Discourse from Corpus and Experimental Data: Bridging the Methodological Gap

This paper starts from the observation that in discourse analysis, unlike in other fields of linguistics, very few studies combine corpus-based and experimental data. It seeks to understand the reasons behind this methodological monism by taking into account the specificities of the discourse level and the benefits and drawbacks of each method. In the first part of the paper, challenges facing the combination of corpora and experimentation are developed. In the second part, a selection of mixed-method discourse-analytic studies is reviewed to illustrate the different ways in which corpora and experiments can interact, how much convergence (or lack thereof) can be found across production and comprehension paradigms, and the technical and methodological solutions that researchers have found to make the data as comparable as possible. This structured literature review concludes with the recommendation that discourse analysis can benefit from more mixed-method approaches, provided that the methods are planned with the respective affordances of each method in mind.Cet article part du constat qu’en analyse du discours, contrairement aux autres domaines de la linguistique, très peu d’études combinent des données de corpus et des données expérimentales. Il s’attache à comprendre les raisons de ce monisme méthodologique par l’examen des spécificités du niveau discursif ainsi que des avantages et inconvénients de chaque méthode. Dans la première partie de l’article, nous développons les défis auxquels la combinaison de corpus et d’expériences doit faire face. Dans la seconde, une sélection d’études multi-méthodes en analyse du discours est revue afin d’illustrer les différentes façons dont corpus et expériences peuvent interagir, la convergence (ou son absence) entre les paradigmes de production et de compréhension, et les solutions techniques et méthodologiques que les chercheurs ont trouvées pour rendre leurs données aussi comparables que possible. Cette revue de la littérature structurée se conclut par la recommandation que l’analyse du discours a beaucoup à gagner d’approches multi-méthodes, pourvu que chaque méthode soit planifiée en tenant compte des possibilités de l’autre