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Query-Feature Graphs: Bridging User Vocabulary and System Functionality
"... This paper introduces query-feature graphs, or QF-graphs. QF-graphs encode associations between high-level descriptions of user goals (articulated as natural language search queries) and the specific features of an interactive system relevant to achieving those goals. For example, a QF-graph for the ..."
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This paper introduces query-feature graphs, or QF-graphs. QF-graphs encode associations between high-level descriptions of user goals (articulated as natural language search queries) and the specific features of an interactive system relevant to achieving those goals. For example, a QF-graph for the GIMP software links the query “GIMP black and white” to the commands “desaturate ” and “grayscale. ” We demonstrate how QF-graphs can be constructed using search query logs, search engine results, web page content, and localization data from interactive systems. An analysis of QF-graphs shows that the associations produced by our approach exhibit levels of accuracy that make them eminently usable in a range of real-world applications. Finally, we present three hypothetical user interface mechanisms that illustrate the potential of QF-graphs: search-driven interaction, dynamic tooltips, and app-to-app analogy search. Keywords: Query-feature Graph, Search-driven Interaction
Community Enhanced Tutorials: Improving Tutorials with Multiple Demonstrations
"... Web-based tutorials are a popular help resource for learning how to perform unfamiliar tasks in complex software. However, in their current form, web tutorials are isolated from the applications that they support. In this paper we present FollowUs, a web-tutorial system that integrates a fully-featu ..."
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Cited by 11 (5 self)
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Web-based tutorials are a popular help resource for learning how to perform unfamiliar tasks in complex software. However, in their current form, web tutorials are isolated from the applications that they support. In this paper we present FollowUs, a web-tutorial system that integrates a fully-featured application into a web-based tutorial. This novel architecture enables community enhanced tutorials, which continuously improve as more users work with them. FollowUs captures video demonstrations of users as they perform a tutorial. Subsequent users can use the original tutorial, or choose from a library of captured community demonstrations of each tutorial step. We conducted a user study to test the benefits of making multiple demonstrations available to users, and found that users perform significantly better using our system with a library of multiple demonstrations in comparison to its equivalent baseline system with only the original authored content.
Task-centric interfaces for feature-rich software
- ACM OZCHI
"... Feature-rich software can be difficult to learn and use, and current approaches to organizing functionality do little to help users with performing unfamiliar tasks. In this paper, we investigate the potential for alternative task-centric interface designs that organize functionality around specific ..."
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Cited by 2 (0 self)
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Feature-rich software can be difficult to learn and use, and current approaches to organizing functionality do little to help users with performing unfamiliar tasks. In this paper, we investigate the potential for alternative task-centric interface designs that organize functionality around specific tasks. To understand the potential of this approach, we developed and studied Workflows, a prototype task-centric interface design. Our findings suggest that task-centric interfaces scaffold and guide the user’s exploration of a subset of application functionality, and thereby help them to avoid common difficulties and inefficiencies caused by self-directed exploration of the full interface. We also found evidence that task-centric interfaces enable a different kind of application learning, in which users associate tasks with relevant keywords as opposed to low-level commands and procedures. This has potential
InterTwine: Creating Interapplication Information Scent to Support Coordinated Use of Software
- Proc UIST
, 2014
"... Users often make continued and sustained use of online re-sources to complement use of a desktop application. For ex-ample, users may reference online tutorials to recall how to perform a particular task. While often used in a coordinated fashion, the browser and desktop application provide sepa-rat ..."
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Users often make continued and sustained use of online re-sources to complement use of a desktop application. For ex-ample, users may reference online tutorials to recall how to perform a particular task. While often used in a coordinated fashion, the browser and desktop application provide sepa-rate, independent mechanisms for helping users find and re-find task-relevant information. In this paper, we describe In-terTwine, a system that links information in the web browser with relevant elements in the desktop application to create in-terapplication information scent. This explicit link produces a shared interapplication history to assist in re-finding in-formation in both applications. As an example, InterTwine marks all menu items in the desktop application that are cur-rently mentioned in the front-most web page. This paper introduces the notion of interapplication information scent, demonstrates the concept in InterTwine, and describes results from a formative study suggesting the utility of the concept. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full cita-tion on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or re-publish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org.
Understanding the Roles and Uses of Web Tutorials
"... In this paper we identify roles and uses of web-based tutorials through an examination of tutorials ’ comments sections. Through this analytical lens, we find that web tutorials serve a variety of needs, providing: in-task help for users with an immediate, specific goal to accomplish; a means for us ..."
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Cited by 1 (1 self)
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In this paper we identify roles and uses of web-based tutorials through an examination of tutorials ’ comments sections. Through this analytical lens, we find that web tutorials serve a variety of needs, providing: in-task help for users with an immediate, specific goal to accomplish; a means for users to proactively expand their repertoire of skills; and an opportunity for novices to shadow and experience an expert’s work practices. We also find a number of emergent practices in tutorial comments. Users post “help-me ” stack traces, a type of comment useful for debugging tutorial content; use comments sections as opportunistic support forums; and turn to comments sections for social and technical validation of their personal skill sets. Collectively, these findings enrich existing perspectives on web-based tutorials and argue for new mechanisms to support these various use cases.
Unweaving Code Search toward Remixing-Centered Programming Support
"... Abstract Recognizing that programming is basically remixing, this chapter looks into the cognitive, social, and practical aspects of searching for and using existing code in a programming task. A code search mechanism undoubtedly plays an essential supporting role in a developers search for code in ..."
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Abstract Recognizing that programming is basically remixing, this chapter looks into the cognitive, social, and practical aspects of searching for and using existing code in a programming task. A code search mechanism undoubtedly plays an essential supporting role in a developers search for code in his or her own programming task. Supporting code search activities, however, demands more than code search mechanisms. At the same time, code search mechanisms also help a developer in a wider spectrum of programming activities. We present the anatomy of the cognitive activity in which a developer searches for existing code, and we propose efficacy and attitude as two dimensions depicting code search activity. We discuss areas of necessary technical and socio-technical support for code search activities in addition to code search mechanisms. We conclude the chapter by calling for a developercentered remixing-oriented development environment. 1 Unweaving Code Search Everything is a remix. 1 A large part of software is built by using existing code from open source software (OSS) via the Web. Programming is now viewed as basically remixing.
Socially-Adaptable Interfaces: Crowdsourcing Customization
"... This paper reports our work developing socially-adaptable interfaces, interfaces that crowdsource the creation of taskspecific interface customizations and instantly share them with all users of the application. We start with an introduction to the socially-adaptable interface concept and Adaptable ..."
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This paper reports our work developing socially-adaptable interfaces, interfaces that crowdsource the creation of taskspecific interface customizations and instantly share them with all users of the application. We start with an introduction to the socially-adaptable interface concept and Adaptable Gimp, a system that we are developing to test these ideas. We then discuss a number of new interaction paradigms for feature-rich applications that this work opens up. Author Keywords Adaptable interfaces, crowdsourcing, human-powered interfaces, wikis. ACM Classification Keywords H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Leveraging Crowdsourced Technical Documentation: Building a Command Thesaurus
"... Since its inception, the Internet has enabled motivated members of an application’s user base to compose and self-publish technical documentation, manuals and tutorials. These distributed acts of self-publishing can be thought of as the implicit crowdsourcing of technical support. In this paper, we ..."
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Since its inception, the Internet has enabled motivated members of an application’s user base to compose and self-publish technical documentation, manuals and tutorials. These distributed acts of self-publishing can be thought of as the implicit crowdsourcing of technical support. In this paper, we leverage user-generated documentation to construct what we call a “command thesaurus”. A command thesaurus groups together semantically related words, bridging the gap between the vocabulary expressed by users and the (sometimes highly technical) terminology employed by software applications. In this work, we outline one potential approach for the automatic generation of a command thesaurus, and we present some initial experiments suggesting that the proposed approach is feasible. We then conclude by describing various compelling applications of these newly generated resources. In particular, command thesauri may find use in search-driven interfaces, and in tools that translate tutorials from one application to another.
(s|qu)eries: Visual Regular Expressions for Querying and Exploring Event Sequences
"... Figure 1. Two queries on a fictional shopping website web log. Left: Query to explore checkout behaviors of users depending on direct referral versus users that were referred from a specific website. Right: Query to view geographical location of customers that used the search feature. Many different ..."
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Figure 1. Two queries on a fictional shopping website web log. Left: Query to explore checkout behaviors of users depending on direct referral versus users that were referred from a specific website. Right: Query to view geographical location of customers that used the search feature. Many different domains collect event sequence data and rely on finding and analyzing patterns within it to gain meaning-ful insights. Current systems that support such queries either provide limited expressiveness, hinder exploratory workflows or present interaction and visualization models which do not scale well to large and multi-faceted data sets. In this pa-per we present (s|qu)eries (pronounced “Squeries”), a visual query interface for creating queries on sequences (series) of data, based on regular expressions. (s|qu)eries is a touch-based system that exposes the full expressive power of regu-lar expressions in an approachable way and interleaves query specification with result visualizations. Being able to visu-ally investigate the results of different query-parts supports debugging and encourages iterative query-building as well as exploratory work-flows. We validate our design and imple-mentation through a set of informal interviews with data sci-entists that analyze event sequences on a daily basis. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full cita-tion on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or re-publish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org.
