Revisitation analysis of smartphone app use

We present a revisitation analysis of smartphone use to investigate the question: do smartphones induce usage habits? We analysed three months of application launch logs from 165 users in naturalistic settings. Our analysis reveals distinct clusters of applications and users which share similar revisitation patterns. However, we show that much of smartphone usage on a macro-level is very similar to web browsing on desktops, and thus argue that smartphone usage is driven by innate service needs rather than technology characteristics. On the other hand, on a micro-level we identify unique characteristics in smartphone usage, and we present a rudimentary model that accounts for 92 % in the variability of our smartphone use. Author Keywords Revisitation, smartphone use, habits, user behaviou

IMPROVING REVISITATION IN LONG DOCUMENTS WITH TWO-LEVEL ARTIFICIAL-LANDMARK SCROLLBARS

Revisitation – returning to previously-visited locations in a document – is commonly done in the digital world. While linear navigation controls provide a spatial representation of the document and allow effective navigation in short documents, they are not effective in long documents, particularly for revisitation. Bookmarks, search and history dialogs, and “read wear” (visual marks left as the user interacts with the document) can all assist revisitation; however, for long documents all of these tools are limited in terms of effort, clutter, and interpretability. Inspired by visual cues such as coloured edges and “thumb indents” in hardcopy books, recent work has proposed artificial landmarks to help users build up natural spatial memory for the locations in a document; in long documents, however, this technique is also limited because of the number of pages each landmark represents. To address this problem, this thesis proposes a Double-Scrollbar design that uses two columns of artificial landmarks that can provide greater specificity for spatial memory and revisitation in long documents. We developed three versions of landmark-augmented Double-Scrollbar, using icons, letters, and digits as landmarks. To assess the performance and usability of the Double-Scrollbar design, two studies were conducted with 21 participants, each visiting and revisiting pages of a long document using each of the new designs, as well as a single-column design and a standard scrollbar. Results showed that two levels of icon landmarks were significantly better for assisting revisitation, and were preferred by participants. The two-level artificial-landmark scrollbar is a new way of improving revisitation in long documents by assisting the formation of more precise spatial memories about document locations

You, the Web and Your Device: Longitudinal Characterization of Browsing Habits

Understanding how people interact with the web is key for a variety of applications, e.g., from the design of effective web pages to the definition of successful online marketing campaigns. Browsing behavior has been traditionally represented and studied by means of clickstreams, i.e., graphs whose vertices are web pages, and edges are the paths followed by users. Obtaining large and representative data to extract clickstreams is however challenging. The evolution of the web questions whether browsing behavior is changing and, by consequence, whether properties of clickstreams are changing. This paper presents a longitudinal study of clickstreams in from 2013 to 2016. We evaluate an anonymized dataset of HTTP traces captured in a large ISP, where thousands of households are connected. We first propose a methodology to identify actual URLs requested by users from the massive set of requests automatically fired by browsers when rendering web pages. Then, we characterize web usage patterns and clickstreams, taking into account both the temporal evolution and the impact of the device used to explore the web. Our analyses precisely quantify various aspects of clickstreams and uncover interesting patterns, such as the typical short paths followed by people while navigating the web, the fast increasing trend in browsing from mobile devices and the different roles of search engines and social networks in promoting content. Finally, we contribute a dataset of anonymized clickstreams to the community to foster new studies (anonymized clickstreams are available to the public at http://bigdata.polito.it/clickstream).Comment: 30 page

09101 Abstracts Collection -- Interactive Information Retrieval

From 01.03. to 06.03.2009, the Dagstuhl Seminar 09101 ``Interactive Information Retrieval \u27\u27 was held in Schloss Dagstuhl~--~Leibniz Center for Informatics. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

Personalized Navigation Instruments for Map User Interfaces

A map is a big multi-scale information space. The size of a computer display, however, is limited. Users of digital maps often need to repeatedly resize and reposition the map to seek information. These repeated and excess interactions mar the user experience, and create bottlenecks for efficient information processing. We introduce personalized navigation instruments, a class of navigation instruments that leverage personal important spatial entities (e.g., landmarks and routes) to tackle navigation challenges in map user interfaces. Specifically, we contribute the following three instruments, each of which embodies a novel research idea: 1) Personalized Compass (P-Compass) is a multi-needle compass that extends the concept of a conventional compass to help users establish a reference frame. P-Compass localizes an unknown reference point by visualizing its relationship with respect to landmarks. P-Compass leverages what a user knows to help them figure out what they do not know. 2) SpaceTokens are interactive map widgets that represent locations, and help users see and link locations rapidly. With SpaceTokens, users can use locations directly as controls to manipulate a map, or building blocks to link with other locations. SpaceTokens make locations first-class citizens of map interaction. 3) SpaceBar associates a simple linear scrollbar with a complex nonlinear route, thus facilitates efficient route comprehension and interaction. SpaceBar is akin to a scrollbar for a route. We prototyped these three instruments in a custom smartphone application, used the application regularly in daily life, and validated our design in two formal studies. While maps are the focus in this dissertation, our ideas need not be limited to maps. For example, we have prototyped P-Compass with Google Street View and a 3D virtual earth tour application. We conclude this dissertation with several directions for future work, such as AR/VR and personalized spatial information user interfaces involving sound, gestures, and speech

Characterizing and Predicting Email Deferral Behavior

Email triage involves going through unhandled emails and deciding what to do with them. This familiar process can become increasingly challenging as the number of unhandled email grows. During a triage session, users commonly defer handling emails that they cannot immediately deal with to later. These deferred emails, are often related to tasks that are postponed until the user has more time or the right information to deal with them. In this paper, through qualitative interviews and a large-scale log analysis, we study when and what enterprise email users tend to defer. We found that users are more likely to defer emails when handling them involves replying, reading carefully, or clicking on links and attachments. We also learned that the decision to defer emails depends on many factors such as user's workload and the importance of the sender. Our qualitative results suggested that deferring is very common, and our quantitative log analysis confirms that 12% of triage sessions and 16% of daily active users had at least one deferred email on weekdays. We also discuss several deferral strategies such as marking emails as unread and flagging that are reported by our interviewees, and illustrate how such patterns can be also observed in user logs. Inspired by the characteristics of deferred emails and contextual factors involved in deciding if an email should be deferred, we train a classifier for predicting whether a recently triaged email is actually deferred. Our experimental results suggests that deferral can be classified with modest effectiveness. Overall, our work provides novel insights about how users handle their emails and how deferral can be modeled

Web information search and sharing :

制度:新 ; 報告番号:甲2735号 ; 学位の種類:博士(人間科学) ; 授与年月日:2009/3/15 ; 早大学位記番号:新493

Diverse Contributions to Implicit Human-Computer Interaction

Cuando las personas interactúan con los ordenadores, hay mucha información que no se proporciona a propósito. Mediante el estudio de estas interacciones implícitas es posible entender qué características de la interfaz de usuario son beneficiosas (o no), derivando así en implicaciones para el diseño de futuros sistemas interactivos. La principal ventaja de aprovechar datos implícitos del usuario en aplicaciones informáticas es que cualquier interacción con el sistema puede contribuir a mejorar su utilidad. Además, dichos datos eliminan el coste de tener que interrumpir al usuario para que envíe información explícitamente sobre un tema que en principio no tiene por qué guardar relación con la intención de utilizar el sistema. Por el contrario, en ocasiones las interacciones implícitas no proporcionan datos claros y concretos. Por ello, hay que prestar especial atención a la manera de gestionar esta fuente de información. El propósito de esta investigación es doble: 1) aplicar una nueva visión tanto al diseño como al desarrollo de aplicaciones que puedan reaccionar consecuentemente a las interacciones implícitas del usuario, y 2) proporcionar una serie de metodologías para la evaluación de dichos sistemas interactivos. Cinco escenarios sirven para ilustrar la viabilidad y la adecuación del marco de trabajo de la tesis. Resultados empíricos con usuarios reales demuestran que aprovechar la interacción implícita es un medio tanto adecuado como conveniente para mejorar de múltiples maneras los sistemas interactivos.Leiva Torres, LA. (2012). Diverse Contributions to Implicit Human-Computer Interaction [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17803Palanci