2,848 research outputs found

    Searching with Tags: Do Tags Help Users Find Things?

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    This study examines the question of whether tags can be useful in the process of information retrieval. Participants searched a social bookmarking tool specialising in academic articles (CiteULike) and an online journal database (Pubmed). Participant actions were captured using screen capture software and they were asked to describe their search process. Users did make use of tags in their search process, as a guide to searching and as hyperlinks to potentially useful articles. However, users also made use of controlled vocabularies in the journal database to locate useful search terms and of links to related articles supplied by the database

    Cognitive aspects of work with digital maps

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    Digital maps of geographic areas are increasingly common in many types of workplace, in education and in the public domain. Their interactivity and visual features, and the complexity of geographic(al) information systems (GIS) which create, edit and manipulate them, create special cognitive demands on the end-user which are not present in traditional cartographic maps or in most human-computer interaction (HCI). This thesis reviews cross-disciplinary literature regarding cognitive aspects of viewing and interacting with digital maps. Data from an observational study of GIS use, including real-time recordings of normal workplace activities, was analysed using various approaches to examine the interactive and visual aspects of people's work. The implications for cartographic, psychological and HeI aspects of GIS are discussed, in the context of the actual tasks people perform with them (rather than the computationally advanced analyses assumed by most literature). The second phase of the research examined the spatial knowledge attained and used during this interaction. The relevance of specific concepts in cognitive psychology, and of factors that create individual differences in cognition, are discussed in depth, alongside work in environmental and educational psychology, cartography and geography. A controlled experiment examined the degree to which task characteristics induce a different spatial model or reference frame when viewing a digital map. It was shown that even novice users can switch between considering the map as an abstract geometric display or as a geographical representation, without affecting performance. However, tasks forcing subjects to focus entirely on the geometry rather than the geography did affect performance in a surprise post-test photograph identification task. Map users' mental model or reference frame is apparently affected by these task constraints; this has implications for GIS design and practice as well as for understanding spatial cognition The study also considered the role of expertise and other individual difference factors, although conclusions were limited by sample size. Further research issues are highlighted, particularly regarding the knowledge structures and spatial language used in interpreting digital maps

    CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

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    After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

    An analysis of the application of AI to the development of intelligent aids for flight crew tasks

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    This report presents the results of a study aimed at developing a basis for applying artificial intelligence to the flight deck environment of commercial transport aircraft. In particular, the study was comprised of four tasks: (1) analysis of flight crew tasks, (2) survey of the state-of-the-art of relevant artificial intelligence areas, (3) identification of human factors issues relevant to intelligent cockpit aids, and (4) identification of artificial intelligence areas requiring further research

    Characterizing and Evaluating Users' Information Seeking Behavior in Social Tagging Systems

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    Social tagging systems in the Web 2.0 era present an innovative information seeking environment succeeding the library and traditional Web. The primary goals of this study were to, in this particular context: (1) identify the general information seeking strategies adopted by users and determine their effectiveness; (2) reveals the characteristics of the users who prefer different strategies; and (3) identify the specific traits of users' information seeking paths and understand factors shaping them. A representative social tagging system, Douban (http://www.douban.com/) was chosen as the research setting in order to generate empirical findings.Based on the mixed methods research design, this study consists of a quantitative phase and a qualitative phase. The former firstly involved a clickstream data analysis of 20 million clickstream records requested from Douban at the footprint, movement, and track levels. Limited to studying physical behavior, it was complemented by an online survey which captured Douban users' background information from various aspects. In the subsequent qualitative phase, a focus group gathered a number of experienced Douban users to help interpret the quantitative results.Major findings of this study show that: (1) the general strategies include encountering, browsing by resource, browsing by tag, browsing by user/group, searching, and monitoring by user/group; (2) while browsing by resource is the most popular strategy, browsing by tag is the most effective one; (3) users preferring different strategies do not have significantly different characteristics; and (4) on users' information seeking paths these exist two resource viewing patterns - continuous and sporadic, and two resource collecting patterns - lagged and instant, and they can be attributed to user, task, and system factors.A model was developed to illustrate the strategic and tactic layers of users' information seeking behavior in social tagging systems. It offers a deep insight into the behavioral changes brought about by this new environment as compared to the Web in general. This model can serve as the theoretical base for designing user-oriented information seeking interfaces for social tagging systems so that the general strategies and specific tactics will be accommodated efficiently

    Grounding for a computational model of place

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    Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006.Text printed 2 columns per page.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 66-70).Places are spatial locations that have been given meaning by human experience. The sense of a place is it's support for experiences and the emotional responses associated with them. This sense provides direction and focus for our daily lives. Physical maps and their electronic decedents deconstruct places into discrete data and require user interpretation to reconstruct the original sense of place. Is it possible to create maps that preserve this sense of place and successfully communicate it to the user? This thesis presents a model, and an application upon that model, that captures sense of place for translation, rather then requires the user to recreate it from disparate data. By grounding a human place-sense for machine interpretation, new presentations of space can be presented that more accurately mirror human cognitive conceptions. By using measures of semantic distance a user can observe the proximity of place not only in distance but also by context or association. Applications built upon this model can then construct representations that show places that are similar in feeling or reasonable destinations given the user's current location.(cont.) To accomplish this, the model attempts to understand place in the context a human might by using commonsense reasoning to analyze textual descriptions of place, and implicit statements of support for the role of these places in natural activity. It produces a semantic description of a place in terms of human action and emotion. Representations built upon these descriptions can offer powerful changes in the cognitive processing of space.Matthew Curtis Hockenberry.S.M

    CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

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    Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

    SEPEC conference proceedings: Hypermedia and Information Reconstruction. Aerospace applications and research directions. Addendum

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    The papers presented at the conference on hypermedia and information reconstruction are compiled. The following subject areas are covered: hypertext, typographic man, and the notion of literacy; a knowledge base browser using hypermedia; Ai GERM - a logic programming front end for GERM; and HEAVENS system for software artifacts
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