“WARES”, a Web Analytics Recommender System

Il est difficile d'imaginer des entreprises modernes sans analyse, c'est une tendance dans les entreprises modernes, même les petites entreprises et les entrepreneurs individuels commencent à utiliser des outils d'analyse d'une manière ou d'une autre pour leur entreprise. Pas étonnant qu'il existe un grand nombre d'outils différents pour les différents domaines, ils varient dans le but de simples statistiques d'amis et de visites pour votre page Facebook à grands et sophistiqués dans le cas des systèmes conçus pour les grandes entreprises, ils pourraient être shareware ou payés. Parfois, vous devez passer une formation spéciale, être un spécialiste certifiés, ou même avoir un diplôme afin d'être en mesure d'utiliser l'outil d'analyse. D'autres outils offrent une interface d’utilisateur simple, avec des tableaux de bord, pour satisfaire leur compréhension d’information pour tous ceux qui les ont vus pour la première fois. Ce travail sera consacré aux outils d'analyse Web. Quoi qu'il en soit pour tous ceux qui pensent à utiliser l'analyse pour ses propres besoins se pose une question: "quel outil doit je utiliser, qui convient à mes besoins, et comment payer moins et obtenir un gain maximum". Dans ce travail je vais essayer de donner une réponse sur cette question en proposant le système de recommandation pour les outils analytiques web –WARES, qui aideront l'utilisateur avec cette tâche "simple". Le système WARES utilise l'approche hybride, mais surtout, utilise des techniques basées sur le contenu pour faire des suggestions. Le système utilise certains ratings initiaux faites par utilisateur, comme entrée, pour résoudre le problème du “démarrage à froid”, offrant la meilleure solution possible en fonction des besoins des utilisateurs. Le besoin de consultations coûteuses avec des experts ou de passer beaucoup d'heures sur Internet, en essayant de trouver le bon outil. Le système lui–même devrait effectuer une recherche en ligne en utilisant certaines données préalablement mises en cache dans la base de données hors ligne, représentée comme une ontologie d'outils analytiques web existants extraits lors de la recherche en ligne précédente.It is hard to imagine modern business without analytics; it is a trend in modern business, even small companies and individual entrepreneurs start using analytics tools, in one way or another, for their business. Not surprising that there exist many different tools for different domains, they vary in purpose from simple friends and visits statistic for your Facebook page, to big and sophisticated systems designed for the big corporations, they could be free or paid. Sometimes you need to pass special training, be a certified specialist, or even have a degree to be able to use analytics tool, other tools offers simple user interface with dashboards for easy understanding and availability for everyone who saw them for the first time. Anyway, for everyone who is thinking about using analytics for his/her own needs stands a question: “what tool should I use, which one suits my needs and how to pay less and get maximum gain”. In this work, I will try to give an answer to this question by proposing a recommender tool, which will help the user with this “simple task”. This paper is devoted to the creation of WARES, as reduction from Web Analytics REcommender System. Proposed recommender system uses hybrid approach, but mostly, utilize content–based techniques for making suggestions, while using some user’s ratings as an input for “cold start” search. System produces recommendations depending on user’s needs, also allowing quick adjustments in selection without need of expensive consultations with experts or spending lots of hours for Internet search, trying to find out the right tool. The system itself should perform as an online search using some pre–cached data in offline database, represented as an ontology of existing web analytics tools, extracted during the previous online search

Mnews: A Study of Multilingual News Search Interfaces

With the global expansion of the Internet and the World Wide Web, users are becoming increasingly diverse, particularly in terms of languages. In fact, the number of polyglot Web users across the globe has increased dramatically. However, even such multilingual users often continue to suffer from unbalanced and fragmented news information, as traditional news access systems seldom allow users to simultaneously search for and/or compare news in different languages, even though prior research results have shown that multilingual users make significant use of each of their languages when searching for information online. Relatively little human-centered research has been conducted to better understand and support multilingual user abilities and preferences. In particular, in the fields of cross-language and multilingual search, the majority of research has focused primarily on improving retrieval and translation accuracy, while paying comparably less attention to multilingual user interaction aspects. The research presented in this thesis provides the first large-scale investigations of multilingual news consumption and querying/search result selection behaviors, as well as a detailed comparative analysis of polyglots’ preferences and behaviors with respect to different multilingual news search interfaces on desktop and mobile platforms. Through a set of 4 phases of user studies, including surveys, interviews, as well as task-based user studies using crowdsourcing and laboratory experiments, this thesis presents the first human-centered studies in multilingual news access, aiming to drive the development of personalized multilingual news access systems to better support each individual user

Essays on the Influence of Website Emotional Design Features on Users' Emotional and Behavioral Responses

As the Internet technologies have become more advanced, as well as online users that have become more sophisticated, the competition in the e-commerce is increasingly aggressive for online vendors. Therefore, online user experience has emerged as a major issue in developing strategies for online vendors to gain advantage over such changing competitive landscape. Although past studies have widely explored the online user experience, they largely focus on the website design feature (designer) perspective and often ignore the user perspective. Considering both design feature and user perspectives, this research provides a better understanding how different website design features enhance user experience.Three essays are conducted in this dissertation to address the importance of website design features in influencing user experience. The first essay explores how website visual appeal and ease of use impact users' perceptions of usefulness, trust, and intention to use in the context of unfamiliar website. The study reveals that visual appeal produces a greater influence on the users' perceptions than ease of use. The findings also indicate that both visual appeal and ease of use are contributing factors in developing online trust among male users, with visual appeal dominating trust formation among female users.The second essay investigates how website visual order and complexity influence users' initial aesthetic impressions of a website, and how these impressions subsequently impact engagement and intention to use the website. An experiment is conducted to test the durability of the visual design features across two exposure times (1-second vs. no time limit). The results suggest that user can quickly evaluate websites (within 1 second), and these evaluations remain consistent even when time constraints are removed. In addition, the findings also reveal the importance of visual order on user attention span and attention on design elements presented on web pages.The third essay examines how individual differences in the centrality of visual aesthetics (CVA) influence users' perceptions of a website. A series of three experiments is conducted in this study to provide guidelines how to capture CVA, as well as how CVA subsequently influence users' response toward a websiteManagement Science & Information Systems (PhD

Evaluating Visitor Experience in the Department of Coins and Medals

The Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum sponsored our evaluation of two specific galleries in order to discover new ways to improve their exhibits for visitors. This evaluation included Cases 3 and 10 of Gallery 68 as well as the entire Gallery 69a. To collect data efficiently, we employed tracking studies and surveys as determined by the British Museum Evaluation Framework. In addition, we created new and effective ways for future researchers to display data visually. Of these tools, the most important was the creation of macros in Excel that tabulate data and create heat maps of the galleries

Applicability of the User Experience Methodology: Communication and Employment Web Portal for Older Adults

The purpose of this study is to redesign a web portal, oriented to communication and employment management for older adults, from the perspective of user experience, using the user experience methodology. The graphic and functional elements of the platform were considered, enhancing the effectiveness of the communication and inclusion processes and accessibility to employment opportunities. The study is part of a mixed investigation, attending the following stages: (a) exploration of the users of the ServiSenior portal platform during 2021 (constituted by 11 collaborators, 15 clients, and 30 older adults); (b) documentary analysis of the state of the art of employment portals for older adults; (c) proposal design incorporating user experience improvements; (d) testing to validate the value proposition delivered to the target audience. The results obtained were taken into account in decision-making for the approach to the design of the digital portal. This proposal is theoretically based on user-centered design, from which the user experience methodology emerges, which seeks to improve the use and quality of services of digital portals centered on users, emphasizing the attribute of universal use and access. The results obtained enhance the applicability of digital tools that serve to insert a vulnerable population in work spaces, assuming as a starting point design, accessibility, and ease of use

Reinventing College Physics for Biologists: Explicating an epistemological curriculum

The University of Maryland Physics Education Research Group (UMd-PERG) carried out a five-year research project to rethink, observe, and reform introductory algebra-based (college) physics. This class is one of the Maryland Physics Department's large service courses, serving primarily life-science majors. After consultation with biologists, we re-focused the class on helping the students learn to think scientifically -- to build coherence, think in terms of mechanism, and to follow the implications of assumptions. We designed the course to tap into students' productive conceptual and epistemological resources, based on a theoretical framework from research on learning. The reformed class retains its traditional structure in terms of time and instructional personnel, but we modified existing best-practices curricular materials, including Peer Instruction, Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, and Tutorials. We provided class-controlled spaces for student collaboration, which allowed us to observe and record students learning directly. We also scanned all written homework and examinations, and we administered pre-post conceptual and epistemological surveys. The reformed class enhanced the strong gains on pre-post conceptual tests produced by the best-practices materials while obtaining unprecedented pre-post gains on epistemological surveys instead of the traditional losses.Comment: 35 pages including a 15 page appendix of supplementary material

Incorporating proactivity to context-aware recommender systems for e-learning

Recommender systems in e-learning have proved to be powerful tools to find suitable educational material during the learning experience. But traditional user request-response patterns are still being used to generate these recommendations. By including contextual information derived from the use of ubiquitous learning environments, the possibility of incorporating proactivity to the recommendation process has arisen. In this paper we describe methods to push proactive recommendations to e-learning systems users when the situation is appropriate without being needed their explicit request. As a result, interesting learning objects can be recommended attending to the user?s needs in every situation. The impact of this proactive recommendations generated have been evaluated among teachers and scientists in a real e-learning social network called Virtual Science Hub related to the GLOBAL excursion European project. Outcomes indicate that the methods proposed are valid to generate such kind of recommendations in e-learning scenarios. The results also show that the users' perceived appropriateness of having proactive recommendations is high