Age-related Differences in the Content of Search Queries when Reformulating
Supporting Information Seeking
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Karanam, Saraschandra
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van Oostendorp, Herre
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.5720-5730
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: This study investigated the change in the content of the queries when
performing reformulations in relation to age and task difficulty. Results
showed that both generalization and specialization strategies were applied
significantly more often for difficult tasks compared to simple tasks. Young
participants were found to use specialization strategy significantly more often
than old participants. Generalization strategy was also used significantly more
often by young participants, especially for difficult tasks. Young participants
were found to reformulate much longer than old participants. The semantic
relevance of queries with the target information was found to be significantly
higher for difficult tasks compared to simple tasks. It showed a decreasing
trend across reformulations for old participants and remained constant for
young participants, indicating that as old participants reformulated, they
produced queries that were further away from the target information.
Implications of these findings for design of information search systems are
discussed.
Navigating in a virtual environment with model-generated support
Cognitive support
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van Oostendorp, Herre
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Karanam, Saraschandra
Proceedings of the 2013 Annual European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics
2013-08-26
p.17
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: Though the cognitive processes controlling user navigation in virtual
environments as well as in websites are similar, cognitive models of
web-navigation have never been used for generating support in virtual
environment navigation. We created a simulated 3D building of a hospital and
presented users various navigation tasks under two conditions: a control
condition and a model-generated support condition. Mean task-completion time
and disorientation were recorded. It was found that the cognitive model used
can simulate the navigation behavior of participants and also that with
model-generated support participants took significantly less time to reach
their destination and were significantly less disoriented. The impact of
providing model-generated support on disorientation was especially higher for
users with low spatial ability. We demonstrated that it is possible to generate
tools for navigation in virtual environments using cognitive models developed
for web-navigation.
Interaction of textual and graphical information in locating web page
widgets
Articles
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Karanam, Saraschandra
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van Oostendorp, Herre
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Melguizo, Mari Carmen Puerta
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Indurkhya, Bipin
Behaviour and Information Technology
2013-05-01
v.32
n.5
p.503-515
© Copyright 2013 Taylor and Francis
Summary: Current models of web navigation focus only on the influence of textual
information and ignore the role of graphical information. We studied the
differential role of text and graphics in identifying web page widgets
classified into two kinds: textual and graphical. Four different versions of
web pages were created by systematically removing textual and graphical
information from each page. The task of the participants was to locate either
textual or graphical widgets on the displayed web page. Results show that for
any widget, the task-completion time and the number of clicks were
significantly less in web pages with graphics than in those with no graphics.
This demonstrates the importance of graphical information. However, textual
information is also important because performance in locating graphical widgets
under no-graphics conditions was better when text was present than with no
text. Since, for identifying graphical widgets, text and graphics interact and
complement each other, we conclude that cognitive models on web navigation
should include the role of graphical information next to textual information.
CrowdUtility: know the crowd that works for you
CSCW
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Dasgupta, Koustuv
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Rajan, Vaibhav
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Karanam, Saraschandra
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Ponnavaikko, Kovendhan
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Balamurugan, Chithralekha
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Piratla, Nischal M.
Extended Abstracts of ACM CHI'13 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2013-04-27
v.2
p.145-150
© Copyright 2013 ACM
Summary: Crowdsourcing platforms aim to leverage the collective intelligence of a
largely distributed Internet workforce to solve a wide range of tasks. Crowd
workers (unlike in a typical organization), exhibit varying work patterns,
expertise, and performance -- with little or no control that can be imposed on
them. Requesters (e.g. enterprises) also exhibit diverse requirements in terms
of the size, complexity and timings of the tasks, as well as SLAs (performance
expectations). Clearly, the heterogeneity makes the choice of a platform suited
for a given task difficult for the user. This paper highlights this problem and
proposes CrowdUtility -- a first-of-a-kind statistical machine learning
approach, which models the dynamic behavioral characteristics of crowdsourcing
platforms and uses them to recommend the best platform for the enterprise
task(s). Initial results from real-world experiments suggest that the proposed
system provides an attractive solution to this erstwhile unsolved problem.
CoLiDeS+ Pic: a cognitive model of web-navigation based on semantic
information from pictures
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van Oostendorp, Herre
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Karanam, Saraschandra
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Indurkhya, Bipin
Behaviour and Information Technology
2012-01
v.31
n.1
p.17-30
© Copyright 2012 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC
Summary: Comprehension-based linked model of deliberate search
(CoLiDeS) + Pic is a cognitive model of web-navigation that takes
into account the semantic information from graphical elements present on a
web-page to compute the information scent value of the hyperlinks. The model is
based on CoLiDeS, which has a two-phase processing cycle: (a) attention phase,
which first parses the web-page and focuses attention on the region of the
web-page that is semantically most similar to the goal, and (b)
action-selection phase, which evaluates the available actions in the focused
region and selects a particular action such as clicking a link. The graphical
elements are important both for attracting attention to a region of the
web-page and for communicating semantic meaning that may alter or enhance the
meaning of the hyperlink labels. In the first part of this article, we give a
theoretical explanation of the CoLiDeS + Pic model and describe the
methodology followed to implement it. In the second part, we run a simulation
on a mock-up website and evaluate the effect of pictures on information scent
of hyperlinks by means of the CoLiDeS + Pic model on basis of the
simulation results. It was found that CoLiDeS + Pic with highly
relevant pictures increases the values of information scent of task-relevant
hyperlinks, and therefore it increases the probability of selecting those
hyperlinks compared to CoLiDeS (without pictures) or CoLiDeS + Pic
with lowly relevant pictures. These results confirm the importance of including
information from pictures into the modelling of web-navigation.
Evaluating CoLiDeS + Pic: the role of relevance of pictures in
user navigation behaviour
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Karanam, Saraschandra
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van Oostendorp, Herre
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Indurkhya, Bipin
Behaviour and Information Technology
2012-01
v.31
n.1
p.31-40
© Copyright 2012 Taylor and Francis Group, LLC
Summary: CoLiDeS + Pic is a cognitive model of web-navigation that
incorporates semantic information from pictures intoCoLiDeS. In our earlier
research, we have demonstrated that by incorporating semantic information from
pictures, CoLiDeS + Pic can predict the hyperlinks on the shortest
path more frequently, and also with greater information scent, compared to
earlier cognitive models of web-navigation like CoLiDeS that relied only on
textualinformation from hyperlinks. In this article, we investigate the
following research questions. First, would the increase in information scent
have an impact on the actual user navigation behaviour? Second, do users
actually follow the navigation path predicted by CoLiDeS + Pic? In
other words, would CoLiDeS + Pic predict actual user navigation
behaviour more accurately than CoLiDeS? We investigate these questions by
varying the relevance of pictures on a web page and studying the impact of
varying relevance on the user navigation patterns. We found that under the
highly relevant picture condition, users were more accurate and took less time
to finish their tasks. Also, under the highly relevant picture condition,
CoLiDeS + Pic predicts significantly greater number of actual user
clicks. There was no significant difference in model predictions between the
lowly relevant picture condition and no-picture condition. These results
validate the predictions made by CoLiDeS + Pic.
The role of content in addition to hyperlinks in user-clicking behavior
Information seeking and navigation
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Karanam, Saraschandra
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van Oostendorp, Herre
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Indurkhya, Bipin
Proceedings of the 2010 Annual European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics
2010-08-25
p.125-131
© Copyright 2010 Author(s)
Summary: Motivation -- Cognitive models of web-navigation such as CoLiDeS, CoLiDeS+,
SNIF-ACT compute the correct hyperlink by using information from the hyperlink
text alone and ignore all other information on a web-page. This paper focuses
on verifying the validity of this assumption by investigating the role played
by the main content in addition to hyperlink text on the deciding the correct
hyperlink.
Research approach -- A mock-up website with two conditions: (i) with main
content and hyperlinks and (ii) without main content but with hyperlinks was
created. 18 students performed 8 information retrieval tasks on this mock-up
website.
Findings/Design -- The results showed that the user-click behaviour with or
without main content remained largely the same. The same links were selected by
users in both conditions. Also, the same amount of time was spent on the
commonly selected links in both conditions.
Research limitations/Implications -- We restrict ourselves to the role of
main content in this experiment and did not study the impact of other factors
like pictures.
Originality/Value -- These results provide an empirical proof to the
assumption CoLiDeS makes in its 3rd and 4th phases of focusing and selecting.
Take away message -- Implication of the results is that one needs to study
deeper the relevance/quality of wording used for hyperlinks in relation to the
main content. We assume that if the wordings (of the links) are relevant or
familiar to the user, the influence of main content would be negligible but if
they are less relevant or unfamiliar, the content becomes more influential.
