CS 430 / INFO 430
Information Retrieval
Lecture 24
Usability 3
1
Course Administration
2
The Design/Evaluate Process
Requirements
(needs of users
and other
stakeholders)
Evaluation
start
Implementation
(may be prototype)
release
3
Design (creative
application of
design principles)
Timeline and level of activity
Requirements
Design
Implementation
Evaluation
4
User-Centered Approach
User interfaces
• Requirements
– Who are the users?
– What do they want?
– What do they need?
• Designing the user interface
• Implementing the user interface
• Evaluating the user interface
5
Requirements
Who are the users?
• Understanding the users via ethnographic research
• Descriptions of users:
– Demographic characteristics
– Computer usage background
– Job description and work environment
– Disabilities:
• Color blindness
• Language issues
• Typing issues
• Personas – archetypes of users, describing behavior
patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment
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Requirements
What do Users Need?
• Defining user interface requirements
• Based on task analysis:
– Task definition
– Context definition
• Several ways to accomplish task analysis:
– Scenario-based analysis
– Discussion with users and subject-matter experts
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Requirements
What do Users Want?
• When asking users, they often:
– Provide their attitudes, not their needs
– Bend the truth to be closer to what they think you want
to hear
– Rationalize their behavior
“I would have seen the button if it had been bigger”
• Instead of asking users what they want:
– Watch what they actually do
– Do not believe what they say they do
– Definitely do not believe what they predict they may do
in the future
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Non-functional Requirements
Performance, Reliability, Scalability, Security…
Example: Response time
0.1 sec – the user feels that the system is reacting
instantaneously
1 sec – the user will notice the delay, but his/her flow of
thought stays uninterrupted
10 sec – the limit for keeping the user's attention focused on
the dialogue
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Design from a System Viewpoint
interface design
mental
model
functional design
data and metadata
computer systems and networks
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Design
Mental Models
• What a person thinks is true about a system, not
necessarily what is actually true
• Similar in structure to the system that is represented
• Allows a person to predict the results of his actions
• Simpler than the represented system. A mental model
includes only enough information to allow accurate
predictions (i.e. no data structures)
Also called conceptual model
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Design
Mental Models – Example 1
User Model of an Article
The article’s body and meta-data
are conceived as a whole.
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System Model of an Article
An article’s meta-data is available
in one database and its data is
available in a separate database.
Design
Mental Models – Example 2
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User Model of a search
engine
System Model of a search
engine
The search engine retrieves return
hits directly from their source
The search action does not involve
accessing the documents’ source
Interface Design
The interface design is the appearance on the screen and
the actual manipulation by the user
•
Fonts, colors, logos, key board controls, menus, buttons
• Mouse control or keyboard control?
• Conventions (e.g., "back", "help")
Examples:
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•
Screen space utilization in Acrobat, American Memory
and other page turners.
•
Number of snippets per page and choice of hyperlinks.
Functional Design
The functional design, determines the functions that are
offered to the user
•
Selection of parts of an object
• Searching a list or sorting the results
• Help information
• Manipulation of objects on a screen
• Pan or zoom
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Same functions, different interface
Example: Boolean query
• Type terms and operators (and, or, ...) in a text box
• Type terms, but select operators from a structure editor
Example: the desk top metaphor
• Mouse -- 1 button (Macintosh), 2 button (Windows)
or 3 button (Unix)
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Varieties of user interfaces
End user interface. Allows a library user to search, browse,
or retrieve known items.
Librarian and system administrator interface. Provides
services for an authenticated user to view, add, delete, or
edit index records.
Batch interface. Provides a method to index large numbers
of digital objects automatically.
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Data and metadata
Structural data and metadata stored by the
computer system enable the functions and the
interface
• Effectiveness of searching depends on the type and
quality of data that is indexed (free-text, controlled
vocabulary, etc.)
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Computer systems and networks
The performance, reliability and predictability of computer
systems and networks is crucial to usability
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Design
User Interface Design Guidelines
• Consistency
– Appearance, controls, and function
– Both within the system and to similar systems
• Feedback
• Recognition rather than recall
• Easy reversal of actions
– Error handling
• Consider different expertise:
– Novice, intermediate and expert users
• User in control
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Information Visualization
Human eye is excellent in identifying patterns in graphical
data.
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•
Trends in time-dependent data.
•
Broad patterns in complex data.
•
Anomalies in scientific data.
•
Visualizing information spaces for browsing.
Visualization within Documents:
Tilebars
The figure represents a set of hits
from a text search.
Each large rectangle represents a
document or section of text.
Each row represents a search term or
subquery.
The density of each small square
indicates the frequency with which a
term appears in a section of a
document.
Hearst 1995
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Table Views: Missing Elements
2 records
without
language
element
format
element
present
inconsistently
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Table Views: Element Names vs. Namespaces
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Table Views: Spotfire
Only DC Language
elements are
selected for display
DC Creator
values in the
language field!
The ability to
select interesting
subsets of
information – on
the fly – allows
for manageably
sized, scrollable
lists in which ALL
values can be
examined.
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Semantic Zooming: Pad++
Concept. A large collection of information viewed at many
different scales. Imagine a collection of documents spread out
on an enormous wall.
Zoom. Zoom out and see the whole collection with little detail.
Zoom in part way to see sections of the collection. Zoom in to
see every detail.
Semantic Zooming. Objects change appearance when they
change size, so as to be most meaningful. (Compare maps.)
Performance. Rendering operations timed so that the frame
refresh rate remains constant during pans and zooms.
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Semantic Zooming: Pad++ File
Browser
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Semantic Zooming: Pad++ File
Browser
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Semantic Zooming: Pad++ File
Browser
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Case Study: Treemaps
Ben Shneiderman, Treemaps for space-constrained
visualization of hierarchies, last updated April 2006,
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/
"During 1990, in response to the common problem of a
filled hard disk, I became obsessed with the idea of
producing a compact visualization of directory tree
structures..."
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Case Study: Treemaps
Original design using TreeViz
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Case Study: Treemaps
Treemap algorithms
• BinaryTree - Partially ordered, not very good aspect
ratios, stable
• Ordered - Partially ordered, medium aspect ratios,
medium stability
• SliceAndDice - Ordered, very bad aspect ratios, stable
• Squarified - Unordered, best aspect ratios, medium
stability
• Strip - Ordered, medium aspect ratios, medium stability
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Case Study: Treemaps
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Hughes satellite management system: shows
hierarchy and available capacity
Case Study: Treemaps
Squarified layout using Treemap 3.0 (University of Maryland)
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Case Study: Treemaps
Voronoi Treemaps using arbitrary polygons
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