[ACT-R-users] [Fwd: TODAY: Dissertation Proposal: Leonghwee Teo, Tuesday, September 8th, 3:30pm (NSH 1305)]

[Bonnie John]

Sorry I forgot to ask Leonghwee to send this out to ACT-R. My bad.
Hope to see some of you there - ACT-R underlies all his work, 
specifically, it is based on, and expands, SNIF-ACT.
Bonnie


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	TODAY: Dissertation Proposal: Leonghwee Teo, Tuesday, 
September 8th, 3:30pm (NSH 1305)
Date: 	Tue, 8 Sep 2009 00:35:32 -0400
From: 	Leonghwee Teo <lhteo at cmu.edu>
To: 	hcii-members at cs.cmu.edu



DISSERTATION PROPOSAL

Modeling Goal-Directed User Exploration in Human-Computer Interaction

Leonghwee Teo
Human Computer Interaction Institute

Tuesday, September 8th, 3:30pm
Newell Simon Hall 1305


COMMITTEE

Bonnie E. John (Chair)
Aniket Kittur
Brad A. Myers
Peter L. Pirolli (PARC)


ABSTRACT

Designing user-interfaces so that first-time or infrequent users can
accomplish their goals by exploration has been an enduring challenge
in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Iterative user-testing is an
effective but costly method to develop user-interfaces that support
use through exploration. A complementary method is to use modeling
tools that can generate predictions of user exploration given a
user-interface and a goal description.

Recent computational models of goal-directed user exploration have
focused on predicting user exploration of websites and demonstrated
how predictions can inform user-interface design. These models employ
the common concepts of label following and information scent, that the
user’s choice is partly determined by the semantic relevance between
the user’s goal and the options presented in the user-interface.
However, in addition to information scent, other factors including the
layout position and grouping of options in the user-interface also
affect user exploration and the likelihood of success.

In this dissertation, I propose research work for a modeling tool
called CogTool-Explorer. CogTool-Explorer will consider the
information scent, the visual search process, and the layout and
grouping of options in the user-interface in concert, to make more
accurate predictions of goal-directed user exploration compared to
prior modeling tools. The proposed research will focus on the modeling
and predictions by CogTool-Explorer, with a secondary focus on making
CogTool-Explorer into a tool for practitioner use. In the
presentation, I will first review and synthesize the related work on
goal-directed user exploration in HCI and highlight the research gaps
that are the focus of this dissertation. I will then present the work
I have done to address some of these gaps, and propose the remaining
work to complete this dissertation.


DOWNLOADS

Proposal document:
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/teo/Teo_Dissertation_Proposal.pdf

Proposal flyer:
http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/teo/Teo_Proposal_Flyer.pdf


Hope to see you there!

Leonghwee