Masks: bringing anonymity and personalization together

Unlike most privacy tools, the Masks framework gives Web sites general information to personalize services without compromising the user's anonymity.     

Semiotic engineering: bringing designers and users together at interaction time

Semiotic engineering is a semiotic theory of human–computer interaction, where interactive computer systems are viewed as one-shot messages sent from designers to users. Through the system's interface, in many direct and indirect ways, designers are telling the users how they can, should, or must interact with the system in order to achieve a particular range of goals anticipated at design time. Designers are thus active interlocutors at human–computer interaction time. Their interactive discourse is delivered implicitly and/or explicitly by the system, which constitutes the designer's deputy. The importance of bringing designers and users together at interaction time springs from the intellectual nature of software artifacts. They are the result of human reasoning, choice and decision, rather than the direct effect of universal or natural laws. An adequate understanding of interactive artifacts depends on apprehending and comprehending the human intellect in action. Hence, in addition to producing interactive artifacts, designers must also introduce them appropriately, as is the case of other intellectual products. In this paper, we show how semiotic engineering can provide substantial theoretic support for viewing and exploring design possibilities brought about by this shift in perspective. We also discuss ontological and epistemological aspects of the theory, and conclude that it can bridge some of the gaps between other fragmented HCI theories and approaches.     

IIT Intranet Mediator: bringing data together on a corporateintranet

A mediator is a software module that interacts with a user and a variety of data sources to provide one-stop shopping for an organization's data. This approach is especially attractive when taken over a large, heterogeneous system of data, because the cost of source integration for such a system is high. Intranet and digital libraries could benefit from mediators because they handle myriad data types and must treat all data appropriately, according to its type. A mediator's key goal is to simply answer natural-language questions, deriving answers from sources that contain structured, semistructured, and unstructured data in a particular domain. Various efforts, like those conducted as part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's annual Text Retrieval Conference, focus on unstructured sources. The IIT Intranet Mediator extends these efforts to include structured and semistructured sources     

Knowledge-sharing in virtual communities: familiarity,anonymity and self-determination theory

Although the role of motivation has been emphasised in knowledge-sharing literature, traditional motivation theories, such as self-determination theory (SDT), have not been actively used as a research framework in knowledge-sharing research. The purposes of this study are twofold. The first objective is to propose a model, based on SDT, to test the effect of the three basic psychological needs – perceived competence, perceived autonomy and perceived relatedness – on knowledge-sharing behaviours in virtual communities. The second objective is to explore the effects of familiarity and anonymity on the basic psychological needs to better understand individuals’ knowledge-sharing behaviours in virtual communities. The results show that perceived competence and perceived relatedness influence knowledge-sharing behaviours in virtual communities; however, perceived autonomy does not influence knowledge-sharing behaviours; familiarity influences positively perceived competence and perceived relatedness, and anonymity influences negatively perceived autonomy and perceived relatedness.     

Weaving the internet together: Imagined communities in newspaper comment threads

Online newspapers (and other spaces) are increasingly seeking to utilise user-generated content alongside professionally developed material. However, this might leave websites increasingly vulnerable to trolls, who work to disrupt online communications in online spaces. Such behaviour can have serious consequences both in peoples online and offline lives, and for the development of coherent online communities. One means of controlling is through the manipulation of the online space to create social norms of polite behaviour through the founding of ‘imagined communities’ online.Approaching the issue from a discursive psychological perspective, this paper draws upon comments published in two online British newspaper comment sections responding to the publication of an academic article on trolling. Imagined communities are shown to arise irrespective of the presence of the virtual infrastructure to support the development of these imagined communities.Key features of imagined communities identified here are: individuation (as opposed to deindividuation); mutual influence between posters; shared history for both the users and the online space; the use of humour to cement social bonds. Analysis also revealed tensions in posters understanding of online and offline behaviours.This research holds implications for understanding online spaces, and the interactions between users within these spaces.     

基于云模型熟悉相似度的协同过滤推荐算法

研究了一种新的协同过滤推荐方法。针对推荐算法中相似度存在的不足,提出了兼顾"形状-距离"的云模型综合相似度测算方法;考虑用户之间的兴趣匹配,提出了云模型熟悉相似度的概念;提出了基于云模型熟悉相似度的邻居用户选择方法,进而产生推荐。实验结果表明,本方法提高了推荐准确度。     

基于连边相似度的重叠社区发现算法研究

针对GN算法在发现重叠社区时存在的不足,以及为了降低算法时间复杂度,提出一种基于网络图中连边相似度划分连边集的重叠社区发现算法EGN。算法依据网络图的连边集进行划分,每一条边被划分到某个特定的社区,而一个节点可以关联多条连边,因此节点可以被划分到不同的社区,从而发现重叠社区。EGN算法首先需要构造网络节点之间连边关系的边图;然后根据边图中节点的关系计算网络图中连边的相似度,在节点之间相似度的基础上提出了连边之间相似度的计算方法;再按照相似度由小到大对边图删除边,构建出边图的树状图。树状图的每一层对应网络的一个划分,采用划分密度函数来衡量划分的质量,以此寻找最优的划分。最后将算法应用到Zachary空手道俱乐部网络中,并与GN算法进行对比,实验结果表明EGN算法能够很好地发现重叠社区。     

Healthier together: Social support,self-regulation and goal management for chronic conditions in online health communities

We investigate the effectiveness of goal management in online health communities (OHCs) in light of social support and self-regulation for patients with chronic diseases. With a five-year longitudinal data set, we found that informational support contributes to both goal progress and self-reflection. Emotional support encourages patients to practice self-reflection if the goals are set for non-mental diseases. We also find that patients' self-reflection promotes goal progress. Finally, the lack of attention control negatively affects goal progress and self-reflection. Grounded in social cognitive theory, this study is among the first to empirically examine the effect of self-regulation and social support in OHCs.     

EMDialog: bringing information visualization into the museum

Digital information displays are becoming more common in public spaces such as museums, galleries, and libraries. However, the public nature of these locations requires special considerations concerning the design of information visualization in terms of visual representations and interaction techniques. We discuss the potential for, and challenges of, information visualization in the museum context based on our practical experience with EMDialog, an interactive information presentation that was part of the Emily Carr exhibition at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. EMDialog visualizes the diverse and multi-faceted discourse about this Canadian artist with the goal to both inform and provoke discussion. It provides a visual exploration environment that offers interplay between two integrated visualizations, one for information access along temporal, and the other along contextual dimensions. We describe the results of an observational study we conducted at the museum that revealed the different ways visitors approached and interacted with EMDialog, as well as how they perceived this form of information presentation in the museum context. Our results include the need to present information in a manner sufficiently attractive to draw attention and the importance of rewarding passive observation as well as both short- and longer term information exploration.     

基于交叠社团相似性的生物网络关键节点识别

生物网络是研究生物特性的一个重要工具,目前已经有许多方法用于研究生物网络,关键节点分析是其中最常用的方法之一。关键节点分析通常是根据一定的规则为网络中的各节点分配一个函数值,并由此来确定网络中各节点的重要程度,目前已经发表了一些方法。然而,这些方法在单独使用的情况下,获得的关键节点的生物学意义一般较低,存在一定的缺陷。本文从节点对社团贡献的角度建立关键节点识别方法,首先提取网络中富含生物学功能意义的社团,然后依据交叠社团的相似性为各节点分配贡献值,最后通过两个生物网络实例论证了方法的有效性。     

Accessing the virtual museum: bringing museum information into cyberspace

As well as three-dimensional objects, museums contain related information in a range of formats which cannot be displayed in the traditional museum manner. Additionally related objects may be held by several museums making cross-collection comparisons desirable but difficult. In addition, the ubiquity of the World Wide Web has led to the expectation of universal availability. This paper explores the issues and outlines solutions adopted at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.     

Happy together: sensors and users

This issue of IEEE Internet Computing is focused on data-driven applications in sensor networks, which, in a literal sense, might not seem to have much to do with user experience (UE). We are hoping to offer some insights into how UE people might think about this problem area and others like it, what issues they might raise, and what opportunities could arise by considering those issues. The final message is that, although sensor-network management presents a unique set of challenges, the usual rules of user-centered design still apply: know your users; know their tasks; design, test, and repeat. In some highly technical domains, you might be designing for skilled, experienced users with a clear foundation of domain knowledge and expertise. From a UE design perspective, this means that the designers can assume the presence of this knowledge about the domain, and design the system around it. The interface that results could well be impenetrable to anybody outside the domain, but that might be okay - there's nothing wrong with building interfaces for experts if that's who your users are. The catch is that the UI designers has to learn enough about the domain that they can do the design, because so much of what makes it an effective interface is bound up in the domain's details. That's the route that gets you a great interface, and a great user experience.     

NIST and NSA: Perfect together

The new director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Dr Raymond Kammer, has told the US Senate Subcommittee for Technology and Space that his agency and the National Security Agency (NSA) have worked very closely together in many computer security efforts.     

Optical 3D digitizers: bringing life to the virtual world

The purpose of 3D scanning is to bridge the real world with the virtual world. A practical system would not only produce photorealistic models, but would also be inexpensive and easy to use. We took a 3D scanner developer's viewpoint to review different 3D digitizing techniques. We briefly compare existing systems and give special consideration to active optical triangulation-based scanners     

Understanding novelty: how task structure and tool familiarity moderate performance

Consumers and corporate end users are regularly faced with the challenge of adapting to new technology tools and their user interfaces. Understanding the role of user experience in using these new interfaces is an important aspect of assessing and planning for how new innovations are received. Through a controlled laboratory experiment in the information retrieval domain, we find that the effect of task (web search) familiarity on performance depends on the task structure (open-ended versus closed-ended) and the degree of tool familiarity (a traditional textual list versus a novel graphical interface for presenting web search results). Our results show that task experience has a positive effect on performance when the task structure is closed-ended and the interface is familiar, and a negative effect when the task structure is open-ended and the interface is unfamiliar. This study not only adds to the literature on user experience in the context of IT use, but also has practical implications for the testing and adoption of new technologies, indicating that novices may be better, or at least an important group, for testing truly novel tools and their interfaces.