steve jones - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by steve jones

Digital Libraries, 1998

We analyse transaction logs for a large full-text document collection for Computer Science resear... more We analyse transaction logs for a large full-text document collection for Computer Science researchers. We report insights gained from this analysis and identify resulting search interface design issues.

User Interface Software and Technology, 1998

ABSTRACT Textual query languages based on Boolean logic are common amongst the search facilities ... more ABSTRACT Textual query languages based on Boolean logic are common amongst the search facilities of on-line information repositories. However, there is evidence to suggest that the syntactic and semantic demands of such languages lead to user errors and adversely affect the ...

Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 1999

ABSTRACT Users' information needs are often too complex to be effectively expressed in stand... more ABSTRACT Users' information needs are often too complex to be effectively expressed in standard query interfaces to full-text retrieval systems. A typical need is to find documents that are similar to a given source document, yet describing the content of a document in a few terms is a ...

European Conference on Digital Libraries, 1998

As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases... more As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases, it becomes important to investigate the ways in which users interact with the systems in practice. Transaction logs are one source of usage information, and the information on user behaviour can be culled from them both automatically (through calculation of summary statistics) and manually (by examining query strings for semantic clues on search motivations and searching strategy). We conduct a transaction log analysis on user activity in the Computer Science Technical Reports Collection of the New Zealand Digital Library, and report insights gained and identify resulting search interface design issues.

International Journal on Digital Libraries, 2000

As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases... more As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases, it becomes important to investigate the ways in which users interact with the systems in practice. Transaction logs are one source of usage information, and the information on user behavior can be culled from them both automatically (through calculation of summary statistics) and manually (by examining query strings for semantic clues on search motivations and searching strategy). We have conducted a transaction log analysis on user activity in the Computer Science Technical Reports Collection of the New Zealand Digital Library, and report insights gained and identify resulting search interface design issues. Specifically, we present the user demographics available with our library, discuss the use of operators and search options in queries, and examine patterns in query construction and refinement. We also describe common mistakes in searching, and examine the distribution of query terms appearing in the logs.

CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '05, 2005

Listening to music on personal, digital devices while mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. ... more Listening to music on personal, digital devices while mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. We explore a scheme for exploiting this practice to immerse listeners in navigation cues. Our prototype, Ontrack, continuously adapts audio, modifying the spatial balance and volume to lead listeners to their target destination. An initial lab-based evaluation has demonstrated the approach's efficacy: users were able to complete tasks within a reasonable time and their subjective feedback was positive. Encouraged by these findings, we are building a pocket-sized prototype for further testing.

Interactions, 2006

... Thanks to David Bainbridge, Tim Barnett, Gareth Bradley, Geoff Holmes, and Nigel Warren. back... more ... Thanks to David Bainbridge, Tim Barnett, Gareth Bradley, Geoff Holmes, and Nigel Warren. back to top References. ... 2. Crabtree, A., Benford, S., Rodden, T., Greenhalgh, C., Flintham, M., Anastasi, R., Drozd, A., Adams, M., Row-Farr, J., Tandavanitj, N., and Steed, A. 2004. ...

In this paper we evaluate techniques for browsing photographs on small displays. We present two n... more In this paper we evaluate techniques for browsing photographs on small displays. We present two new interaction techniques that replace conventional scrolling and zooming controls. Via a single user action, scrolling and zooming are inter-dependently controlled with AutoZoom and independently controlled with GestureZoom. Both techniques were evaluated in a large-scale, 72-subject usability experiment alongside a conventional thumbnail grid image browser. Performance with the new techniques was at least as good as that with the standard thumbnail grid, even though none of the subjects had prior experience with such systems. In a number of cases – such as finding small groups of photos or when seeking for images containing small details – the new techniques were significantly faster than the conventional approach. In addition, AutoZoom and GestureZoom supported significantly more accurate identification of subsets of photographs. Subjects also reported lower levels of physical and cognitive effort and frustration with the new techniques in comparison to the thumbnail grid browser.

Journal of The American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2002

This article describes an evaluation of the Kea automatic keyphrase extraction algorithm. Documen... more This article describes an evaluation of the Kea automatic keyphrase extraction algorithm. Document keyphrases are conventionally used as concise descriptors of document content, and are increasingly used in novel ways, including document clustering, searching and browsing interfaces, and retrieval engines. However, it is costly and time consuming to manually assign keyphrases to documents, motivating the development of tools that automatically perform this function. Previous studies have evaluated Kea's performance by measuring its ability to identify author keywords and keyphrases, but this methodology has a number of well-known limitations. The results presented in this article are based on evaluations by human assessors of the quality and appropriateness of Kea keyphrases. The results indicate that, in general, Kea produces keyphrases that are rated positively by human assessors. However, typical Kea settings can degrade performance, particularly those relating to keyphrase length and domain specificity. We found that for some settings, Kea's performance is better than that of similar systems, and that Kea's ranking of extracted keyphrases is effective. We also determined that author-specified keyphrases appear to exhibit an inherent ranking, and that they are rated highly and therefore suitable for use in training and evaluation of automatic keyphrasing systems.

International Journal on Digital Libraries, 1999

Online information repositories commonly provide keyword search facilities through textual query ... more Online information repositories commonly provide keyword search facilities through textual query languages based on Boolean logic. However, there is evidence to suggest that the syntactic demands of such languages can lead to user errors and adversely affect the time that it takes users to form queries. Users also face difficulties because of the conflict in semantics between AND and OR when used in Boolean logic and English language. Analysis of usage logs for the New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL) show that few Boolean queries contain more than three terms, use of the intersection operator dominates and that query refinement is common. We suggest that graphical query languages, in particular Venn-like diagrams, can alleviate the problems that users experience when forming Boolean expressions with textual languages. A study of the utility of Venn diagrams for query specification indicates that with little or no training users can interpret and form Venn-like diagrams in a consistent manner which accurately correspond to Boolean expressions. We describe VQuery, a Venn-diagram based user interface to the New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL). In a study which compared VQuery with a standard textual Boolean interface, users took significantly longer to form queries and produced more erroneous queries when using VQuery. We discuss the implications of these results and suggest directions for future work.

Digital Libraries, 1999

Many digital libraries are comprised of documents from disparate sources that are independent of ... more Many digital libraries are comprised of documents from disparate sources that are independent of the rest of the collection in which they reside. A userÕs ability to explore is severely curtailed when each document stands in isolation; there is no way to navigate to other, related, documents, or even to tell if such documents exist. We describe a method for automatically introducing topicÐbased links into documents to support browsing in digital libraries. Automatic keyphrase extraction is exploited to identify link anchors, and keyphraseÐbased similarity measures are used to select and rank destinations. Two implementations are described: one that applies these techniques to existing WWWÐbased digital library collections using standard HTML, and one that uses a wider range of interface techniques to provide more sophisticated linking capabilities. An evaluation shows that keyphraseÐbased similarity measures work as well as a popular full-text retrieval system for finding relevant destination documents.

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2004

This paper investigates user interpretation of search result displays on small screen devices. Su... more This paper investigates user interpretation of search result displays on small screen devices. Such devices present interesting design challenges given their limited display capabilities, particularly in relation to screen size. Our aim is to provide users with succinct yet useful representations of search results that allow rapid and accurate decisions to be made about the utility of result documents, yet minimize user actions (such as scrolling), the use of device resources, and the volume of data to be downloaded. Our hypothesis is that keyphrases that are automatically extracted from documents can support this aim. We report on a user study that compared how accurately users categorized result documents on small screens when the document surrogates consisted of either keyphrases only, or document titles. We found no significant performance differences between the two conditions. In addition to these encouraging results, keyphrases have the benefit that they can be extracted and presented when no other document metadata can be identified.

IEEE Computer, 1999

As the capabilities of distributed digital libraries increase, managing organizational and softwa... more As the capabilities of distributed digital libraries increase, managing organizational and software complexity becomes a key issue. How can collections and indexes be updated without impacting queries currently in progress? How can the system handle several user interface clients for the same collections? Computer science professors from the University of Waikato have developed a software structure that successfully manages this complexity in the New Zealand Digital Library. This digital library has been a success in managing organizational and software complexity, The researchers' primary goal has been to minimize the effort required to keep the system operational and yet continue to expand its offering

ABSTRACT The open source digital library software Greenstone is demonstrated running on an iPod. ... more ABSTRACT The open source digital library software Greenstone is demonstrated running on an iPod. The standalone configuration supports browsing, searching and displaying documents in a range of media formats. Plugged in to a host computer (Mac, Linux, or Windows), the ...

The Lancet, 2001

The methods of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) for calculating dos... more The methods of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) for calculating doses do not take account of this type of exposure. They assume that the averaging of the energy deposition across entire organs is valid. On this basis, depleted uranium confers very low ...

Digital Libraries, 1998

We analyse transaction logs for a large full-text document collection for Computer Science resear... more We analyse transaction logs for a large full-text document collection for Computer Science researchers. We report insights gained from this analysis and identify resulting search interface design issues.

User Interface Software and Technology, 1998

ABSTRACT Textual query languages based on Boolean logic are common amongst the search facilities ... more ABSTRACT Textual query languages based on Boolean logic are common amongst the search facilities of on-line information repositories. However, there is evidence to suggest that the syntactic and semantic demands of such languages lead to user errors and adversely affect the ...

Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 1999

ABSTRACT Users' information needs are often too complex to be effectively expressed in stand... more ABSTRACT Users' information needs are often too complex to be effectively expressed in standard query interfaces to full-text retrieval systems. A typical need is to find documents that are similar to a given source document, yet describing the content of a document in a few terms is a ...

European Conference on Digital Libraries, 1998

As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases... more As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases, it becomes important to investigate the ways in which users interact with the systems in practice. Transaction logs are one source of usage information, and the information on user behaviour can be culled from them both automatically (through calculation of summary statistics) and manually (by examining query strings for semantic clues on search motivations and searching strategy). We conduct a transaction log analysis on user activity in the Computer Science Technical Reports Collection of the New Zealand Digital Library, and report insights gained and identify resulting search interface design issues.

International Journal on Digital Libraries, 2000

As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases... more As experimental digital library testbeds gain wider acceptance and develop significant user bases, it becomes important to investigate the ways in which users interact with the systems in practice. Transaction logs are one source of usage information, and the information on user behavior can be culled from them both automatically (through calculation of summary statistics) and manually (by examining query strings for semantic clues on search motivations and searching strategy). We have conducted a transaction log analysis on user activity in the Computer Science Technical Reports Collection of the New Zealand Digital Library, and report insights gained and identify resulting search interface design issues. Specifically, we present the user demographics available with our library, discuss the use of operators and search options in queries, and examine patterns in query construction and refinement. We also describe common mistakes in searching, and examine the distribution of query terms appearing in the logs.

CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '05, 2005

Listening to music on personal, digital devices while mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. ... more Listening to music on personal, digital devices while mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. We explore a scheme for exploiting this practice to immerse listeners in navigation cues. Our prototype, Ontrack, continuously adapts audio, modifying the spatial balance and volume to lead listeners to their target destination. An initial lab-based evaluation has demonstrated the approach's efficacy: users were able to complete tasks within a reasonable time and their subjective feedback was positive. Encouraged by these findings, we are building a pocket-sized prototype for further testing.

Interactions, 2006

... Thanks to David Bainbridge, Tim Barnett, Gareth Bradley, Geoff Holmes, and Nigel Warren. back... more ... Thanks to David Bainbridge, Tim Barnett, Gareth Bradley, Geoff Holmes, and Nigel Warren. back to top References. ... 2. Crabtree, A., Benford, S., Rodden, T., Greenhalgh, C., Flintham, M., Anastasi, R., Drozd, A., Adams, M., Row-Farr, J., Tandavanitj, N., and Steed, A. 2004. ...

In this paper we evaluate techniques for browsing photographs on small displays. We present two n... more In this paper we evaluate techniques for browsing photographs on small displays. We present two new interaction techniques that replace conventional scrolling and zooming controls. Via a single user action, scrolling and zooming are inter-dependently controlled with AutoZoom and independently controlled with GestureZoom. Both techniques were evaluated in a large-scale, 72-subject usability experiment alongside a conventional thumbnail grid image browser. Performance with the new techniques was at least as good as that with the standard thumbnail grid, even though none of the subjects had prior experience with such systems. In a number of cases – such as finding small groups of photos or when seeking for images containing small details – the new techniques were significantly faster than the conventional approach. In addition, AutoZoom and GestureZoom supported significantly more accurate identification of subsets of photographs. Subjects also reported lower levels of physical and cognitive effort and frustration with the new techniques in comparison to the thumbnail grid browser.

Journal of The American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2002

This article describes an evaluation of the Kea automatic keyphrase extraction algorithm. Documen... more This article describes an evaluation of the Kea automatic keyphrase extraction algorithm. Document keyphrases are conventionally used as concise descriptors of document content, and are increasingly used in novel ways, including document clustering, searching and browsing interfaces, and retrieval engines. However, it is costly and time consuming to manually assign keyphrases to documents, motivating the development of tools that automatically perform this function. Previous studies have evaluated Kea's performance by measuring its ability to identify author keywords and keyphrases, but this methodology has a number of well-known limitations. The results presented in this article are based on evaluations by human assessors of the quality and appropriateness of Kea keyphrases. The results indicate that, in general, Kea produces keyphrases that are rated positively by human assessors. However, typical Kea settings can degrade performance, particularly those relating to keyphrase length and domain specificity. We found that for some settings, Kea's performance is better than that of similar systems, and that Kea's ranking of extracted keyphrases is effective. We also determined that author-specified keyphrases appear to exhibit an inherent ranking, and that they are rated highly and therefore suitable for use in training and evaluation of automatic keyphrasing systems.

International Journal on Digital Libraries, 1999

Online information repositories commonly provide keyword search facilities through textual query ... more Online information repositories commonly provide keyword search facilities through textual query languages based on Boolean logic. However, there is evidence to suggest that the syntactic demands of such languages can lead to user errors and adversely affect the time that it takes users to form queries. Users also face difficulties because of the conflict in semantics between AND and OR when used in Boolean logic and English language. Analysis of usage logs for the New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL) show that few Boolean queries contain more than three terms, use of the intersection operator dominates and that query refinement is common. We suggest that graphical query languages, in particular Venn-like diagrams, can alleviate the problems that users experience when forming Boolean expressions with textual languages. A study of the utility of Venn diagrams for query specification indicates that with little or no training users can interpret and form Venn-like diagrams in a consistent manner which accurately correspond to Boolean expressions. We describe VQuery, a Venn-diagram based user interface to the New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL). In a study which compared VQuery with a standard textual Boolean interface, users took significantly longer to form queries and produced more erroneous queries when using VQuery. We discuss the implications of these results and suggest directions for future work.

Digital Libraries, 1999

Many digital libraries are comprised of documents from disparate sources that are independent of ... more Many digital libraries are comprised of documents from disparate sources that are independent of the rest of the collection in which they reside. A userÕs ability to explore is severely curtailed when each document stands in isolation; there is no way to navigate to other, related, documents, or even to tell if such documents exist. We describe a method for automatically introducing topicÐbased links into documents to support browsing in digital libraries. Automatic keyphrase extraction is exploited to identify link anchors, and keyphraseÐbased similarity measures are used to select and rank destinations. Two implementations are described: one that applies these techniques to existing WWWÐbased digital library collections using standard HTML, and one that uses a wider range of interface techniques to provide more sophisticated linking capabilities. An evaluation shows that keyphraseÐbased similarity measures work as well as a popular full-text retrieval system for finding relevant destination documents.

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 2004

This paper investigates user interpretation of search result displays on small screen devices. Su... more This paper investigates user interpretation of search result displays on small screen devices. Such devices present interesting design challenges given their limited display capabilities, particularly in relation to screen size. Our aim is to provide users with succinct yet useful representations of search results that allow rapid and accurate decisions to be made about the utility of result documents, yet minimize user actions (such as scrolling), the use of device resources, and the volume of data to be downloaded. Our hypothesis is that keyphrases that are automatically extracted from documents can support this aim. We report on a user study that compared how accurately users categorized result documents on small screens when the document surrogates consisted of either keyphrases only, or document titles. We found no significant performance differences between the two conditions. In addition to these encouraging results, keyphrases have the benefit that they can be extracted and presented when no other document metadata can be identified.

IEEE Computer, 1999

As the capabilities of distributed digital libraries increase, managing organizational and softwa... more As the capabilities of distributed digital libraries increase, managing organizational and software complexity becomes a key issue. How can collections and indexes be updated without impacting queries currently in progress? How can the system handle several user interface clients for the same collections? Computer science professors from the University of Waikato have developed a software structure that successfully manages this complexity in the New Zealand Digital Library. This digital library has been a success in managing organizational and software complexity, The researchers' primary goal has been to minimize the effort required to keep the system operational and yet continue to expand its offering

ABSTRACT The open source digital library software Greenstone is demonstrated running on an iPod. ... more ABSTRACT The open source digital library software Greenstone is demonstrated running on an iPod. The standalone configuration supports browsing, searching and displaying documents in a range of media formats. Plugged in to a host computer (Mac, Linux, or Windows), the ...

The Lancet, 2001

The methods of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) for calculating dos... more The methods of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) for calculating doses do not take account of this type of exposure. They assume that the averaging of the energy deposition across entire organs is valid. On this basis, depleted uranium confers very low ...