Do, TV and Ruddle, RA (2017) MyWebSteps: Aiding Revisiting with a Visual Web History. Interacting with Computers, 29 (4). pp. 530-551. ISSN 0953-5438
Abstract
This research addresses the general topic of ‘keeping found things found’ by investigating difficulties people encounter when revisiting webpages, and designing and evaluating a novel tool that addresses those difficulties. The research focused on occasional revisits—webpages that people have previously visited on only one day, a week or more ago (i.e. neither frequently nor recently). A 3-month logging study was combined with a laboratory experiment to identify 10 underlying causes of participants’ revisiting failure. Overall, 61% of the failures occurred when a webpage had originally been accessed via search results, was on a topic a participant often looked at or was on a known but large website. Then, we designed a novel visual Web history tool to address the causes of failure and implemented it as a Firefox add-on. The tool was evaluated in a 3-month field study, helped participants succeed on 96% of revisits, and was also used by some participants to review and reminisce about their ‘travels’ online. Revised versions of the tool have been publicly released as the Firefox add-on MyWebSteps.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Computer Society. This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Interacting with Computers following peer review. The version of record Trien V. Do, Roy A. Ruddle; MyWebSteps: Aiding Revisiting with a Visual Web History. Interact Comput 2017 1-22. doi: 10.1093/iwc/iww038 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iww038. |
Keywords: | laboratory experiments, field studies, user centered design, scenario-based design, visualization systems and tools, personalization (WWW) |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Computing (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 18 Jan 2017 14:53 |
Last Modified: | 13 Jan 2018 01:38 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iww038 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/iwc/iww038 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:110716 |