Shooting the information rapids

Terms such as 'navigation' and 'information orienteering' have been applied to users working in large information spaces such as the Web or digital libraries. Such terms – and their descriptions – imply that the user is in control of the interaction, moving deliberately through the information space. In practice, as recognised in the work on situated cognition, users often behave much more reactively than this, responding to external stimuli in a fluid way. In this paper we report on user behaviour when interacting with a collection of digital libraries, focusing particularly on situations where users were switching between multiple windows

Co-located sharing photo behaviour using camera phones

Photo sharing on camera phones is becoming a common way of maintaining closeness and relationships with friends and family and can evoke pleasurable, enjoyable or exciting experiences. People have fun when sharing photos containing amusing scenes or friends being caught doing something ‘naughty’. Recent research has seen an increase in studies that focus on the use of camera phones, remote sharing using online services or sharing in a home environment using different digital technology. However, studies that extend this focus to the equally important issues of how co-located sharing using camera phones occurs and what influences it are less common. In addition, there is a dearth of research that links photo sharing with user experience (e.g. pleasure, fun, excitement collectively called hedonic experience; HE). The experience of photo sharing, however, does not exist in a vacuum but in a dynamic relationship with other people, places and objects and photo sharing is a social experience. This thesis explores the relationship between sharing practices within different groups of people and the various settings where sharing occurs. It investigates the situations when people experience pleasure, excitement or fun during the photo sharing activity. However, to understand the nature of HE using mobile interactive technology (digital cameras, PDAs, mobile phones) and what influences experiences a prerequisite is an investigation of photo sharing experiences using mobile phones. The HCI contributions of this thesis include dentification of different types of HE and their characteristics; provides factors influencing such experience and the vocabulary to help communicating issues related to HE when using technology. In addition, it proposes an empirically based Photo Sharing Components Model that captures the contributors of the photo sharing experience (Value of Photos, Social Affordances, Place Affordances and Technology Affordances) and the photo sharing scenario notations, which account for the different sharing behavioural phenomena occurring between different groups of people (e.g. family, friends, others) in different settings (e.g. private, public, work). Finally, an account of how this model might be developed by further research is detailed

From physical to digital: A case study of computer scientists' behaviour in physical libraries

There has been substantial research on various aspects of people's usage of physical libraries but relatively little on their interaction with individual library artefacts; that is: books, journals, and papers. We have studied people's behaviour when working in physical libraries, focusing particularly on how they interact with these artefacts, how they evaluate them, and how they interact with librarians. This study provides a better understanding of how people interact with paper information, from which we can draw implications for some requirements of the design of digital libraries, while recognising that the term 'library' is a metaphor when applied to electronic document collections. In particular, improved communication with other library users and with librarians could facilitate more rapid access to relevant information and support services, and structuring information presentation so that users can make rapid assessments of its relevance would improve the efficiency of many information searches. © Springer-Verlag 2004

Usability of Musical Digital Libraries: a Multimodal Analysis.

There has been substantial research on technical aspects of musical digital libraries, but comparatively little on usability aspects. We have evaluated four web-accessible music libraries, focusing particularly on features that are particular to music libraries, such as music retrieval mechanisms. Although the original focus of the work was on how modalities are combined within the interactions with such libraries, that was not where the main difficulties were found. Libraries were generally well designed for use of different modalities. The main challenges identified relate to the details of melody matching and to simplifying the choices of file format. These issues are discussed in detail. 1

Patterns of interactions: user behaviour in response to search results

This paper presents patterns of users’ interaction when working with digital libraries. It focuses on strategies developed and applied by users over time to achieve their goals. Results show that users choose different patterns of interaction depending on their evaluation of results, particularly in terms of the number of results returned from a search. This study gives indications about how the user interface could better support users in developing different search strategies

The roles of time, place, value and relationships in collocated photo sharing with camera phones

Photo sharing on camera phones is becoming a common way to maintain closeness and relationships with friends and family. How people share their photos in collocated settings using camera phones, with whom they share, and what factors influence their sharing experience were the themes explored in this study. Results showed that people exhibit different photo sharing behaviour depending on who they share photos with, where the sharing takes place and what value a picture represents to its owner. In this paper, we will explain what triggers the photo sharing activity and how the sharing takes place depending on who photos are shared with and where they are shared (e.g. restaurant, pub, home). The sharing experience is hindered by the difficulty of controlling which photographs are made available to particular people; sharing with a group of people at once; and ensuring appropriate privacy measures. These findings highlight requirements for novel mechanisms for organising, sharing, and displaying photos as well as provide a better understanding of photo sharing behaviour using camera phones in collocated settings

Electronic resource discovery systems: from user behaviour to design.

Information seeking is a central part of academic development for both students and researchers. However, this is often hindered by complex and highly complicated electronic resource discovery systems. One approach to improving these resources is to understand the difficulties and likely causes of problems when using current systems and how people develop their searching, retrieval and storage strategies. These might provide useful information about the requirements for future design. In this paper we present our findings from UBiRD, a project investigating user search behaviour in electronic resource discovery systems based on a qualitative study of 34 users from three UK universities. We then describe how the information gathered during the study helped inform the design of INVISQUE, a novel non-conventional interface for searching and querying on-line scholarly information. In addition, the theories and design principles used during the INVISQUE design are discussed

JISC User Behaviour Observational Study: User Behaviour in Resource Discovery: Final Report

The report discusses the information-seeking behaviour of students and researchers working in the Business and Economics disciplines using subscribed and freely available Internet resource discovery systems in three UK HE institutions: Cranfield University, London School of Economics and Middlesex University. The institutions were chosen as examplars of the Russell Group, the 94 Group, and the Million+ groups of universities in the UK. The intention was to describe and gain a better understanding of: (i) how different users (undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers) currently seek information on the existing resource discovery systems, (ii) the roadmap used in a user’s information seeking journey, and (iii) their expectations and needs based on their understanding and experience of using the Internet to find information resources for academic study. In addition, we hope to inform JISC, publishers of electronic resources, and librarians working in the HE sector about user behaviours and the issues relating to resource discovery systems. The data was obtained from an observational study and in-depth interview of 34 participants. Each participant was studied on an individual basis and each session lasted up to two hours. The analysis of the data provided an insight on: resource discovery systems used by participants and what they found to be useful, users information search behaviour and strategies when seeking information, the issues that affect their searching behaviour, problems and difficulties users experienced with library resources, issues related to physical library services as well as recommendations for the publishers and librarians in order to improve the use of electronic resources

An exploration of ebook selection behavior in academic library collections

Academic libraries have offered ebooks for some time, however little is known about how readers interact with them while making relevance decisions. In this paper we seek to address that gap by analyzing ebook transaction logs for books in a university library

A log analysis study of 10 years of ebook consumption in academic library collections

Even though libraries have been offering eBooks for more than a decade, very little is known about eBook access and consumption in academic library collections. This paper addresses this gap with a log analysis study of eBook access at the library of the University of Waikato. This in-depth analysis covers a period spanning 10 years of eBook use at this university. We draw conclusions about the use of eBooks at this institution and compare the results with other published studies of eBook usage at tertiary institutes