Research
Seminars
Department Series
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Invormation Navigation Studies at Canterbury |
|
Dr. Andy Cockburn Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering University of Canterbury Christchurch, New Zealand |
|
This presentation gives an overview of our Human-Computer Interaction research over the last decade on understanding and improving the user's ability to navigate through their information spaces. First, I will present a series of studies that describe how people navigate through the World Wide Web, and the problems that they encounter when doing so. Our attempts to develop interfaces that improve web page re-visitation leads to an aside, comparing the efficiency and effectiveness of 2D and 3D graphical user interfaces for information organizations. Finally, I will present our recent work on improving the users' ability to navigate within their documents. Although scrolling is a dominant interface control for navigating within documents, several researchers have noted that it is slow and distracting when compared to traditional paper documents. Two interface techniques that improve document navigation are presented: first, speed-dependent automatic zooming, which reduces human perceptual motion-blur by automatically zooming away from the document as the scroll speed increases; second, 'space-filling thumbnails', which miniaturizes and tiles all pages within the document so that they are simultaneously visible in one window, allowing the user to quickly form and exploit a spatial understanding of their documents. Recurring themes throughout the talk include the empirical characterization of user activities and the importance of allowing users to exploit their spatial memory.
Andy Cockburn on sabbatical leave in 2006, visiting top HCI research centers including IBM Almaden Research and Universities in Calgary, Saskatoon, Toronto, and Paris. He is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. He has worked there since completing his PhD on CSCW in 1993 at the University of Stirling in Scotland. His research interests cover a broad range of empirical HCI, particularly interfaces for information navigation. He is an avid rock-climber and windsurfer.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]