Personalizing the User Interface

Personalizing the User Interface

Catalogue search interfaces

just how smart should they be?

Workshop leader: Ad Aerts (ad@aasup.nl)

The team

● Alberic Regent (University Leuven)

● Ramon Ros (Library Consortium of Catalonia)

● Frank Waajen (University of Wageningen)

● Miloš Petrovič (University of Maribor)

● Danica Radovanovič (University of Belgrade)

● Harry Janssen (University of Nijmegen)

● Bo Öhrström (Danish National Library Authority)

● Ad Aerts (AA Business Support)

Topics

● Search Interfaces– Search entry– Search strategies– Search results

Questions

● What are the pros and cons for an active interface?

● Should users be divided into groups?● Should users be authenticated?● What 'personalisation' is desirable in the

search form?● What 'personalisation' is desirable in the

search results?

The active interface

● Understands what the user wants● Takes decisions for the user● Advises the user

Pros and cons

● Pros– Frees the user of a

lot of otherwise mandatory decisions

– Helps the user actively

– Reduces the load for support staff

– IF IT WOULD ONLY WORK!!!

● Cons– Is unable to correctly

analyze and predict the users actions and needs

– Is ultimately counter-effective

Prerequisites

● Procedures – clear – evident

● System help information– Complete– Concise

● Educate your users!!

Users and groups

● Users should be able to select their own personalized settings

● Settings should be as flexible as needed for the most demanding user

● Users should be able to choose from a limited number of template settings

● Initially, any user will be assigned one of the template settings

Authentification issues

● Secure

– Avoid abuse– Protect user information and property– Protect organisation information and

property● Easy

– One login for every system and every site– Login confirmation only when needed– Other authentification methods?

Authentification issues - privacy

● We want to know what our users do● We have to store user 'behaviour' preferably

without privacy-sensitive information

Search entry personalisationdependencies

● Level (novice-experienced user)● Purpose (bibliographic information, loan)● Preference for form or query language● Language● Physical limitation

– Sight– Sound

● Material type

Search entry personalisation (continued)

● Elements to be personalised

– Fields/Tags– Field/Tag Combinations– Word order– Word truncation– Fulltext search– Result representation

Search entry personalisation (continued)

● Inititial template

– Basic ● google like

– Intermediate● ??

– Advanced● Search specification fully user definable

Search results personalisationdependencies

● Level (novice-experienced user)● Purpose (bibliographic information, loan)● Preference for form or query language● Language● Physical limitation

– Sight– Sound

● Material type

Search results personalisation

● Elements to be personalised

– Fields/Tags– Presentation– Order– Selection

Search results personalisation (continued)

● Three levels

– One-line shorthand list representation (i.e. Creator, title, date)

– Multiline detail list presentation (i.e. catalogue card)

– Full screen detail presentation● Only relevant information should be shown

Search results personalisation (continued)

● Output type

– Print– e-mail– Web– Downloadable (for import)

Workgroup wish list

● Users should be able to easily compose a personal database from any selection in a number of databases

● Virtual reading room, not only with a catalog, but also facilities to share (personal) documents with a group of users

● “Really” intelligent systems that learn from users, and can recognize group characteristics

Search results personalisation (continued)

● All databases within an organisation should be searchable in the same fashion

● Avoid 'useless' loans: give users acces to tables of contents and summaries

● Evaluation of system usage (what do the users do with our system??)

● A prototype of the ideal search interface

The ultimate wish

Not having to search at all......