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What do People Recall about their Documents? Implications for Desktop

Search Tools

Tristan Blanc-Brude and Dominique L. ScapinINRIAACM IUI 2007 (22%)

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Objective

Find out what users remember about their own documents

Provide suggestions for improving the design of personal file search engines

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Participants

Seven researchers Seven members of administrative staff

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Procedure

Participants were interviewed about their work, environment and how they manage their files

Participants talked about the workflow of their usual job tasks

30 documents belonging to each participant were selected by the experimenter based on task description

– 9 physical, 21 electronic Documents include ones that the that were

– consulted, modified or created by the participant– old, recent or recurring

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Two Phases

Recall Phase – determine what participants remember about their files

Retrieval Phase – find out how participants search for personal files

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Recall Phase

Free-recall – let participants talk freely about what they remember about the files

Cued-recall – give participants a list of file attributes and ask them to give the values

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Recall Phase Attribute List

Location – complete file path Type or Format – file type (e.g., PowerPoint) File Name Title – title of document inside file Size – number of pages, lines, not bytes Time – last usage Keywords – inside document Visual elements – graphics, tables, colors inside document Associated events – related to the last document usage (e.g., emails, t

elephone calls) Links – other related documents Actions – operations performed on the document (e.g., printing, inserti

on, …, etc.)

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Result: Frequency of Free-Recall Attributes

Textual Content – 71.4% Visual Elements – 25% File type or format – 21.4%

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Result: Frequency of Cued-Recall Attributes

Recalled, but not necessarily correct

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Result: Correctness of Recalled Attributes

Partial Recall: A part but not all of the description is correct. Time and size given in ranges.

Associated event, links and actions are left out, because they are hard to verify

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Result: Frequently-used Descriptions

Size – approximation and ranges (e.g. about 50 pages, between 10 to 20 pages)

Time – periods (e.g. in February 2007) Visual elements – color, format and layout

(e.g. double column), presence of objects other than text (e.g. pictures)

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Retrieval Phase

Main search method used by almost all participants– Browsing through folder hierarchy– Find the appropriate file in the folder

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Result: Retrieval Phase

5 participants failed to find at least one document

The hardest part is finding the correct file folder

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Attribute Expression Recommendation

Time – in period Size – approximation or interval Type – higher level category (e.g., slides inst

ead of ppt)

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Attribute Specification Flexibility Recommendation

Wording – users can recall both correct and erroneous words

Size – approximation and interval Time – variable time units (e.g. year, month,

weeks)

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Search Results Extensibility Recommendation

Location – show files in subdirectories in case the user does not remember the correct directory

Time – consider nearby dates in case the user does not remember the exact time

Size – error tolerance of +- 35%

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Content Visualization Recommendation

Show previews of files other than the first pages, because first pages of similar documents can be very similar

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Document Relationship Recommendation

Show the relationship between documents (e.g. copy/paste)

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Operation Log Recommendation

Show a list of operations that had been done a document

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Conclusion

Make the easily-recalled attributes available to users as search options