As more and more reusable structured data appears on the Web, casual users will want to take into their own hands the task of mashing up data rather than wait for mash-up sites to be built that address exactly their i...
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As more and more reusable structured data appears on the Web, casual users will want to take into their own hands the task of mashing up data rather than wait for mash-up sites to be built that address exactly their individually unique needs. In this paper, we present Potluck, a Web user interface that let's casual users-those without programming skills and data modeling expertise-mash up data themselves. Potluck is novel in its use of drag and drop for merging fields, its integration and extension of the faceted browsing paradigm for focusing on subsets of data to align, and its application of simultaneous editing for cleaning up data syntactically. Potluck also lets the user construct rich visualizations of data in-place as the user aligns and cleans up the data. This iterative process of integrating the data while constructing useful visualizations is desirable when the user is unfamiliar with the data at the beginning-acommon case-and wishes to get immediate value out of the data without having to spend the overhead of completely and perfectly integrating the data first. A user study on Potluck indicated that it was usable and learnable, and elicited excitement from programmers who, even with their programming skills, previously had great difficulties performing data integration. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Web macros automate the interactions of endusers with web sites and related information systems. Though web macro recorders and players have grown in sophistication over the past decade, these tools cannot yet meet m...
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Web macros automate the interactions of endusers with web sites and related information systems. Though web macro recorders and players have grown in sophistication over the past decade, these tools cannot yet meet many tasks that people perform in daily life. Based on observations of browser users, we have compiled ten scenarios describing tasks that users would benefit from automating. Our analysis of these scenarios yields specific requirements that web macro tools should support if those tools are to be applicable to these real-life tasks. Our set of requirements constitutes a benchmark for evaluating tools, which we demonstrate by evaluating the Robofox, CoScripter, and Macros tools. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
We report an exploratory research project that investigates the impacts of different forms of design planning on endusers asked to develop a simple interactive web application. endusers created their projects (a Rid...
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We report an exploratory research project that investigates the impacts of different forms of design planning on endusers asked to develop a simple interactive web application. endusers created their projects (a Ride Board application) using the CLICK end-user web development tool [J. Rode, user-centered design of end-user web development tool, Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA, 2005]. Some participants were asked to create a conceptual map to plan their projects and others to write user interaction scenarios;a third group was asked to do whatever they found useful. We describe the planning that each group underwent, how they approached the web development task, and their reactions to the experience afterwards. The overall pattern of results suggests that while the participants who planned using scenarios felt they better understood the web development task, it was the group who created concept maps that explored and incorporated more of the novel programming features of the CLICK tool. We also discuss the role of gender in the CLICK development task, noting that women were less likely to explore the tool's novel features and perceived themselves as less successful in the task. We conclude with a discussion of design implications and future work. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
We describe a new system for building Tablet PC-based classroom software. The system, called SLICE, is built for extensibility, using a unique "explicit state" model. Applications developed thus far include ...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781595939470
We describe a new system for building Tablet PC-based classroom software. The system, called SLICE, is built for extensibility, using a unique "explicit state" model. Applications developed thus far include presentation, classroom interaction, shared code review, and exam grading. The paper presents an overview of the system and describes these four applications. It then explains the extensibility model, showing how users can add new features.
It is challenging to provide endusers an easy-to-use problem-solving toot to combine data from different sources and reuse the results. Inspired by spreadsheets, we argue that spreadsheet-like programming paradigm ca...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781424441983
It is challenging to provide endusers an easy-to-use problem-solving toot to combine data from different sources and reuse the results. Inspired by spreadsheets, we argue that spreadsheet-like programming paradigm can help to reduce the complexity and to improve user experience in building mashups. In this paper, we propose a spreadsheet-like construct as the basis of this mashup building paradigm. The construct includes a data model, a "nested table" view structure and a set of carefully chosen mashup operators. Data from a variety Of sources is structured like a spreadsheet, and end-users are not necessarily aware of the underlining data flow. SpiderCharlotte, a tool to help endusers to build situational applications for their daily uses, was developed to demonstrate the characteristics of this construct.
Little is known about the strategies end-user programmers use in debugging their programs, and even less is known about gender differences that may exist in these strategies. Without this type of information, designer...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781605580111
Little is known about the strategies end-user programmers use in debugging their programs, and even less is known about gender differences that may exist in these strategies. Without this type of information, designers of end-user programming systems cannot know the "target" at which to aim, if they are to support male and female end-user programmers. We present a study investigating this issue. We asked end-user programmers to debug spreadsheets and to describe their debugging strategies. Using mixed methods, we analyzed their strategies and looked for relationships among participants' strategy choices, gender, and debugging success. Our-results indicate that males and females debug in quite different ways, that opportunities For improving support for end-user debugging strategies for both genders are abundant, and that tools currently available to end-user debuggers may be especially deficient in supporting debugging strategies used by females.
end-user programming tools for creating spreadsheets and web-forms offer no data types except "string" for storing many kinds of data, such as person names and street addresses. Consequently, these tools can...
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ISBN:
(纸本)9781605580791
end-user programming tools for creating spreadsheets and web-forms offer no data types except "string" for storing many kinds of data, such as person names and street addresses. Consequently, these tools cannot automatically validate these data. To address this problem, we have developed a new user-extensible model for string-like data. Each "tope" in this model is a user-defined abstraction that guides the interpretation of strings as a particular kind of data, such as a mailing address. Specifically, each tope implementation contains software functions for recognizing and reformatting that tope's kind of data. With our tools, end-user programmers define new topes and associate them with fields in spreadsheets, webforms, and other programs. This makes it possible at runtime to distinguish between invalid data, valid data, and questionable data that could be valid or invalid. Once identified, questionable and/or invalid data can be double-checked and possibly corrected, thereby increasing the overall reliability of the data.
Intelligent agents and cognitive models are useful for a number of purposes. Unfortunately, limited theory-based tool and language support for the creation of intelligent agents has made it difficult for modelers to c...
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Intelligent agents and cognitive models are useful for a number of purposes. Unfortunately, limited theory-based tool and language support for the creation of intelligent agents has made it difficult for modelers to create, debug, and reuse agent software. This dissertation explores how to make it easier to create intelligent agents, and especially cognitive models, by taking advantage of established software engineering principles. The benefits of applying software engineering principles to intelligent agent development is demonstrated with the creation of a high-level language and development environment that embodies these principles, and with an evaluation of this language and environment, in use, by students and cognitive modelers.
Mashups are essentially combinations of APIs and online data in a single interface. However, to be able to take advantage of these systems, users must have the prerequisite programming skills to gather, manipulate, an...
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Mashups are essentially combinations of APIs and online data in a single interface. However, to be able to take advantage of these systems, users must have the prerequisite programming skills to gather, manipulate, and present the data retrieved from these APIs. In order to support the less programming-savvy users, tools have been created that simplify the process and remove many of the more complex programming tasks. While attempting to be comprehensive, as with all emerging technologies, there are design flaws that exist. This work focuses on the tasks that are involved in creating mashups and specifically investigates end-user mental models as they approach this programming task. The first half of this work looks at the skill disparities between expert mashup programmers and novice end-users. I then detail the characteristics of the web-active enduser, a population of endusers who could take advantage of mashups but cannot because of skill barriers. Focusing on this user group, I explore the ways in which they consider online information. In doing so, I formulate a better understand of the mental models of the web-active enduser and provide an informed design guide for the development of future tools.
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