Contextualizing the blogosphere: A comparison of traditional and novel user interfaces for the web

In this paper, we investigate how contextual user interfaces affect blog reading experience. Based on a review of previous research, we argue why and how contextualization may result in (H1) enhanced blog reading experiences. In an eyetracking experiment, we tested 3 different web-based user interfaces for information spaces. The StarTree interface (by Inxight) and the Focus-Metaphor interface are compared with a standard blog interface. Information tasks have been used to evaluate and compare task performance and user satisfaction between these three interfaces. We found that both contextual user interfaces clearly outperformed the traditional blog interface, both in terms of task performance as well as user satisfaction. © 2007 Laqua, S., Ogbechie, N. and Sasse, M. A

Reorganization of Links to Improve User Navigation

Website can be easily design but to efficient user navigation is not a easy task since user behavior is keep changing and developer view is quite different from what user wants, so to improve navigation one way is reorganization of website structure. For reorganization here proposed strategy is farthest first traversal clustering algorithm perform clustering on two numeric parameters and for finding frequent traversal path of user Apriori algorithm is used. Our aim is to perform reorganization with fewer changes in website structure

Improving Web Site Structure to Facilitate Effective User Navigation

Web sites are most effective when they meet both the contents and usability needs of their users. It is revealed, however, that designing usable Web sites is not a trivial task. A primary reason is that Web developers’ perceptions and knowledge can be very different from those of the target users. Such differences result in cases in which users cannot easily locate the relevant information in a Web site. In this paper, we propose a math programming model to improve the navigation effectiveness of a Web site while preserving its original structure whenever possible. Our approach minimizes unnecessary changes to the present structure of a Web site and hence can be applied for Web site maintenance on a regular basis. Our test on a real Web site shows that the approach can provide significant improvements over the Web site structure by introducing only a small number of new links

Easing Operative User Steering through Website Construction Development

Data Mining is a step of Knowledge Discovery in Databases. Clustering can be considered the most important unsupervised learning technique so, as every other problem of this kind, it deals with finding a structure in a collection of unlabeled data and mining major issue is removing unrelavent data. But here we did not find these type data its fail on removing irrelevant and remove back tracking. For this type of problems Designing well-Construction websites to facilitate Operative user Steering has long been a challenge. While various methods have been proposed to re link web pages to improve navigability using user Steering data, the completely reorganized new Construction can be highly unpredictable, and the cost of disorienting users after the changes remains unanalyzed. This paper addresses how to improve a website without introducing substantial changes. By analyzing the efficiency of the proposed work and the existing work, the time taken to retrieve the data will be better in the proposed by removing all the irrelevant features which are gets analyzed. The experimental results are better than 18% on removing irrelevant and 26% for back tracks it is better solution for previous methods

Enlightening Website Structure for Enabling Client Steering Effectually

Designing well-Constructiond websites to facilitate Operative user Steering has long been a challenge. A primary reason is that the web developers’ understanding of how a website should be Constructiond can be considerably different from that of the users. While various methods have been proposed to relink webpages to improve navigability using user Steering data, the completely reorganized new Construction can be highly unpredictable, and the cost of disorienting users after the changes remains unanalyzed. This paper addresses how to improve a website without introducing substantial changes. Specifically, we propose a mathematical programming model to improve the user Steering on a website while minimizing alterations to its current Construction. Results from extensive tests conducted on a publicly available real data set indicate that our model not only significantly improves the user Steering with very few changes, but also can be Operatively solved. We have also tested the model on large synthetic data sets to demonstrate that it scales up very well. In addition, we define two evaluation metrics and use them to assess the performance of the improved website using the real data set. Evaluation results confirm that the user Steering on the improved Construction is indeed greatly enhanced. More interestingly, we find that heavily disoriented users are more likely to benefit from the improved Construction than the less disoriented users

An Efficient Web Usage Mining Approach Using Chaos Optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm Based on Optimal Feedback Model

The dynamic nature of information resources as well as the continuous changes in the information demands of the users has made it very difficult to provide effective methods for data mining and document ranking. This paper proposes an efficient particle swarm chaos optimization mining algorithm based on chaos optimization and particle swarm optimization by using feedback model of user to provide a listing of best-matching webpages for user. The proposed algorithm starts with an initial population of many particles moving around in a D-dimensional search space where each particle vector corresponds to a potential solution of the underlying problem, which is formed by subsets of webpages. Experimental results show that our approach significantly outperforms other algorithms in the aspects of response time, execution time, precision, and recall

National Security Pedagogy: The Role of Simulations

This article challenges the dominant pedagogical assumptions in the legal academy. It begins by briefly considering the state of the field of national security, noting the rapid expansion in employment and the breadth of related positions that have been created post-9/11. It considers, in the process, how the legal academy has, as an institutional matter, responded to the demand. Part III examines traditional legal pedagogy, grounding the discussion in studies initiated by the American Bar Association, the Carnegie Foundation, and others. It suggests that using the law-writ-large as a starting point for those interested in national security law is a mistake. Instead, it makes more sense to work backwards from the skills most essential in this area of the law. The article then proposes six pedagogical goals that serve to distinguish national security law: (1) understanding the law as applied, (2) dealing with factual chaos and uncertainty, (3) obtaining critical distance—including, inter alia, when not to give legal advice, (4) developing nontraditional written and oral communication skills, (5) exhibiting leadership, integrity, and good judgment in a high-stakes, highly-charged environment, and (6) creating continued opportunities for self-learning. Equally important to the exercise of each of these skills is the ability to integrate them in the course of performance. These goals, and the subsidiary points they cover, are neither conclusive nor exclusive. Many of them incorporate skills that all lawyers should have—such as the ability to handle pressure, knowing how to modulate the mode and content of communications depending upon the circumstances, and managing ego, personality, and subordination. To the extent that they are overlooked by mainstream legal education, however, and present in a unique manner in national security law, they underscore the importance of more careful consideration of the skills required in this particular field. Having proposed a pedagogical approach, the article turns in Part IV to the question of how effective traditional law school teaching is in helping to students reach these goals. Doctrinal and experiential courses both prove important. The problem is that in national security law, the way in which these have become manifest often falls short of accomplishing the six pedagogical aims. Gaps left in doctrinal course are not adequately covered by devices typically adopted in the experiential realm, even as clinics, externships, and moot court competitions are in many ways ill-suited to national security. The article thus proposes in Part V a new model for national security legal education, based on innovations currently underway at Georgetown Law. NSL Sim 2.0 adapts a doctrinal course to the special needs of national security. Course design is preceded by careful regulatory, statutory, and Constitutional analysis, paired with policy considerations. The course takes advantage of new and emerging technologies to immerse students in a multi-day, real-world exercise, which forces students to deal with an information-rich environment, rapidly changing facts, and abbreviated timelines. It points to a new model of legal education that advances students in the pedagogical goals identified above, while complementing, rather than supplanting, the critical intellectual discourse that underlies the value of higher legal education

Benchmarking Website Performance in the Public Sector: A Non Parametric Approach

In this paper the outcome of a benchmarking study that compares organization websites in the public sector is presented. In particular, 31 websites of Italian public universities are compared considering the website cognitive efficiency as a measure of its overall performance, i.e. usability and accessibility. Data Envelopment Analysis is performed to generate a measurement for the cognitive efficiency, while cross-efficiency is used to alleviate the weak discriminating capability of the basic DEA model, and have a ranking of sample websites. Seven university websites are 100% cognitive efficient and average efficiency is at 61.63%. Results also show that website cognitive efficiency is positively influenced by the user perceived attractiveness and negatively by the time over-consumption during navigatio

Parametric BIM-based Design Review

This research addressed the need for a new design review technology and method to express the tangible and intangible qualities of architectural experience of parametric BIM-based design projects. The research produced an innovative presentation tool by which parametric design is presented systematically. Focus groups provided assessments of the tool to reveal the usefulness of a parametric BIM-based design review method. The way in which we visualize architecture affects the way we design and perceive architectural form and performance. Contemporary architectural forms and systems are very complex, yet most architects who use Building Information Modeling (BIM) and generative design methods still embrace the two-dimensional 15th-century Albertian representational methods to express and review design projects. However, architecture cannot be fully perceived through a set of drawings that mediate our perception and evaluation of the built environment. The systematic and conventional approach of traditional architectural representation, in paper-based and slide-based design reviews, is not able to visualize phenomenal experience nor the inherent variation and versioning of parametric models. Pre-recorded walk-throughs with high quality rendering and imaging have been in use for decades, but high verisimilitude interactive walk-throughs are not commonly used in architectural presentations. The new generations of parametric and BIM systems allow for the quick production of variations in design by varying design parameters and their relationships. However, there is a lack of tools capable of conducting design reviews that engage the advantages of parametric and BIM design projects. Given the multitude of possibilities of in-game interface design, game-engines provide an opportunity for the creation of an interactive, parametric, and performance-oriented experience of architectural projects with multi-design options. This research has produced a concept for a dynamic presentation and review tool and method intended to meet the needs of parametric design, performance-based evaluation, and optimization of multi-objective design options. The concept is illustrated and tested using a prototype (Parametric Design Review, or PDR) based upon an interactive gaming environment equipped with a novel user interface that simultaneously engages the parametric framework, object parameters, multi-objective optimized design options and their performances with diagrammatic, perspectival, and orthographic representations. The prototype was presented to representative users in multiple focus group sessions. Focus group discussion data reveal that the proposed PDR interface was perceived to be useful if used for design reviews in both academic and professional practice settings

Exploring blog spaces: A study of blog reading experiences using dynamic contextual displays

In this paper we report on an eye-tracking experiment conducted with 60 participants to gain an understanding of how people interact with blog environments. We compared a standard blog interface with a novel contextual blog interface, which dynamically adjusts its contextual navigation to a selected article. We measured task performance and interaction behaviour for explorative tasks and goal-oriented search tasks. We further collected subjective feedback to evaluate user preferences. We found that participants using the contextual blog interface completed search tasks 19% faster and made 80% fewer errors. Moreover, participants using the contextual blog interface interacted more with the provided information during the exploration tasks. We did not find significant differences in user preference overall between both blog interfaces. However, a more detailed analysis of our results suggests significant demographic differences for performance, behavioural and subjective measures. © 2009 The Author