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This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Mostafa, J. and Dillon, A. (1996) Design and Evaluation of a User Interface Supporting Multiple Image Query Models. Proceedings of the 59th Annual Conference of the American Society for Information Science, Baltimore, MD, USA, October 21-26, 1996. I. Introduction: Digital image use occurs in many fields. For example, in the area of medicine, huge volumes of digital images are routinely generated for diagnostic purposes, sometimes reaching gigabyte range (Gitlin, 1992). Besser (1990) has designed highly innovative image- based selection systems to improve access to visual resources in architecture, anthropology and art collections. There are also signs that museums and archives have accepted the value of digital image technology in their environments (Besser, 1991; Wentz, 1989). Unfortunately, the technology for effective storage and retrieval of images has not kept pace with the technology of image production. The situation has reached such a critical stage that National Science Foundation (NSF) organized a special workshop on the topic of visual information management (Jain, 1993). The NSF workshop report stated, "It would be impossible to cope with this explosion of image information, unless the images were organized for retrieval. The fundamental problem is that images, video, and other similar data differ from numeric data and text data format, and hence they require a totally different technique of organization, indexing and query processing." This paper addresses the critical need for different techniques in improving retrieval of digital images. Our position is that the user interface is the principal component responsible for facilitating retrieval in databases. Therefore, to assure effective access design of interfaces need to be improved.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: McKnight, C., Dillon, A. and Shackel, B. (1996) The electronic journal and its implications for the digital library. In T. Harrison and T. Stephens (eds.) Computer Networking and Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century. NY: SUNY Press, 351-368. 1. INTRODUCTION: It is now over ten years since the first electronic journal experiments (e.g., EIES, BLEND) and the intervening years have not seen researchers being idle in this field. Indeed, while experiments have continued apace in an attempt to answer various questions such as the appropriateness of particular interfaces, electronic journals have continued to appear. The third edition of the ARL list (Okerson, 1993) contains 45 electronic journals while the first edition, only two years earlier (Okerson, 1991), listed only 27. This might suggest reasonably rapid growth but in actual fact represents a high rate of turnover also -- 16 of the original 27 do not appear in the latest list. We therefore start this chapter from the assumption that electronic journals will continue to be a feature of the scholarly communication process, although not all will survive. Our second assumption arises from our experiences in the design, implementation and evaluation of information technology based systems in general, not just electronic journals. That is, we assume that in order to be acceptable, any system attempting to replace an existing technology must enable users to perform their necessary tasks in a way which is at least as easy as the existing system. The new system must offer at least as much (and preferably more) than the existing system, otherwise motivation to move from the old to the new is not high. In the present context, this means that the successful electronic journals will be those which not only support the scholarly communication process and all the other user requirements satisfied by paper based journals, but also support additional, enhanced facilities such as tailorable presentation formats, integrated interactive discussion about articles, flexible indexing and retrieval, hypertext linking and so forth.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Vaughan, M. and Dillon, A. (1998) The role of genre in shaping our understanding of digital documents. Proc. 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science. Medford NJ: Information Today Inc., 559-566. Abstract: Interacting with documents in the digital domain is challenging many of our notions about discourse and its boundaries. Hyperlinked documents on the World Wide Web defy easy categorization and evaluation - making the role and value of digital documents difficult to assess. Most importantly, in such fluid and complex environments it is difficult to understand the nature of the interaction between users and information resources. This paper argues that notions such as navigation are limiting our understanding of these complex information spaces. Instead, what is needed is a broader framework of analysis that can embrace these concepts, and incorporate extended issues relating to shared understanding, relevance, and style. In the present paper we explore the utility of the intersection of genre theory and cognitive psychology in providing a meaningful framework for analysis and design purposes. In so doing we report the results of our latest research into the elements of genre that influence users of digital documents and provide examples of the usefulness of this analysis in web-based environments.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. and Watson, C. (1996) User analysis HCI-the historical lessons from individual differences research. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 45(6), 619-638. Abstract: User analysis is a crucial aspect of user-centered systems design, yet Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has yet to formulate reliable and valid characterizations of users beyond gross distinctions based on task and experience. Individual differences research from mainstream psychology has identified a stable set of characteristics that would appear to offer potential application in the HCI arena. Furthermore, in its evolution over the last 100 years, research on individual differences has faced many of the problems of theoretical status and applicability that are common to HCI. In the present paper the relationship between work in cognitive and differential psychology and current analyses of users in HCI is examined. It is concluded that HCI could gain significant predictive power if individual differences research was related to the analysis of users in contemporary systems design.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A., Richardson, J. and McKnight, C. (1991) Institutionalizing Human Factors in the design process: the ADONIS Experience. Contemporary Ergonomics '91, London: Taylor and Francis, 421-426. Abstract: The ADONIS workstation was an experimental document delivery system developed to facilitate retrieval and printing of CD-ROM stored articles. Although primarily aimed at the document supply industry, its potential application in libraries and research environments with end users was recognised. Hence, the present authors were asked to assess the system ergonomically from this perspective, and the outcomes of this assessment form the basis of this paper. It was clear that the design of the system ignored many formal ergonomic considerations. Subsequent user evaluations of the interface highlighted several potentially serious problems and cast doubt on the usability of the system in the end-user domain. A follow-up study of actual usage rates during field-testing of the product confirmed the findings of the initial evaluation and also indicated that some of the very first design decisions (e.g., regarding the choice of journal titles included), which proved detrimental to the system's acceptance, might have been very different if human factors considerations had been taken into account. The present paper describes the system and the problems highlighted by the human factors practitioners as well as discussing the pitfalls that could have been avoided by earlier involvement. The potential role of human factors in early design of such products is emphasised.

This is an early access article. / We investigated the role of subjective factors in the information search process. Forty eight participants each conducted six web searches in a controlled setting. We examined relationships between subjective factors (happiness levels, satisfaction with and confidence in the search results, feeling lost during search, familiarity with and interest in the search topic, estimation of task difficulty), and objective factors (search behavior, search outcomes and search task characteristics). Data analysis was conducted using a multivariate statistical test (Canonical Correlations Analysis). The findings confirmed existence of several relationships suggested by prior research, including relationships between objective search task difficulty and the perception of task difficulty; between subjective states and search behaviors and outcomes. One of the original findings suggests that higher happiness levels before the search and during the search correlate with better feelings after the search, but also correlates with worse search outcomes and lower satisfaction, suggesting that, perhaps, it pays off to feel some â painâ during the search in order to â gainâ quality outcomes.

In an effort to understand the impact of designing for digital genres on usersâ mental representations of structure, a two-phase study was conducted. In phase 1, six expert news readers and a panel of HCI experts were solicited for input regarding genre-conforming and genre-violating web news page design, navigation, and story categorization. In phase 2, a longitudinal experiment with a group of 25 novice web news readers who were exposed to one of the two designs over 5 sessions is reported. During these sessions a variety of user data were captured, including: comprehension (recall, recognition), usability (time on task, accuracy, user satisfaction), and navigation (path length, category node hits). The between-group difference of web site design was signiï¬ cant for comprehension, usability, and navigation with the users of the genre-conforming design demonstrating better performance. The within-group difference of time was signiï¬ cant across these three measures as well, with performance improving over time. No interaction effect was found between web site design and time on comprehension or usability. However, a surprising interaction effect was found on navigation; speciï¬ cally the breadth of navigation (i.e. the number of nodes visited for two classes of tasks) increased over time more dramatically for the genre-violating group than for the genre-conforming group. By examining the changes in these data over time and between the two designs, evidence for the development of usersâ mental representations of structure was captured.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. and Maynard, S. (1995) Don't forget to put the cat out! Why collaborative hypermedia and everyday writing pass one another by. The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia: Applications and Research, 1, 135-153. Abstract: Hypermedia technology is seen as offering potentially innovative support for the process of writing as much as information access and reading. However, authoring enviroments to date have had little impact in the realâ world production of text. One possible reason is our poor conceptualisation of current writing practice. In the present paper, 31 adult writers kept diaries of their writing activities over the course of one week. The results indicate that for most pople, real world writing is a short communicative act aimed at a limited audience and that technological support for such writing is less likely to resemble a hypermedia workstation than a portable personal communication device. Implications for work in the design of authoring tools are developed.

This item is not the definitive copy. Please use the following citation when referencing this material: Dillon, A. and McKnight, C. (1995) Never mind the theory, feel the data: Observations on the design of Hypertext-based User Interfaces, In W. Schuler, J. Hannemann and N. Streitz (eds.) Designing User Interfaces for Hypermedia, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 117-125. Introduction: In the present paper we will seek to place the design of hypermedia-based user interfaces in the appropriate context of user-centred system design. In so doing we will outline what we believe to be the major methodological issues. As this will indicate, we view hypermedia design as essentially no different from any other kind interface design in terms of process and problem. Hence the methodological issues for hypermedia interfaces need to be seen as design problems rather than cognitive scientific ones. In this vein, we argue for a data-driven approach to design that seeks theoretical insight at the methodological and process level of design rather than the user level.