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Published on: November 21, 2019
Concertina browsers: a formative evaluation of user preference
Simon Harper1, Nicola Christophorou
1School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. simon.harper@manchester.ac.uk
Disability and Rehabilitation. Assistive Technology
|November 26, 2008
Summary
Concertina browsers enhance information cognition for web users, especially those with visual impairments or using mobile devices. User preferences indicate optimal summarization starts with 6.25% top/bottom slices, expanding by 2% to 18.50% maximum.
Area of Science:
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Information Science
- Web Design
Background:
- Concertina browsers, which allow users to expand and contract information sections, improve cognition of small to medium data amounts.
- Renewed interest in concertina browsers is driven by the Mobile Web, due to similarities in visual constraints between visually impaired users and mobile device users.
- Effective information fragmentation and reduced 'information overload' are crucial for user experience in web browsing.
Purpose of the Study:
- To enhance user experience in concertina browser design by understanding user preferences for summarization techniques.
- To investigate the speed/depth trade-off inherent in concertina browsing systems.
- To provide data-driven recommendations for optimizing concertina browser summarization strategies.
Main Methods:
- A formative evaluation was conducted to ascertain user preferences for different concertina summarization techniques.
- User preferences were analyzed for various starting, maximum, and step percentage slices of web documents.
- The study focused on documents under 600 words to identify optimal summarization parameters.
Main Results:
- Users preferred concertina summarization starting with 6.25% slices from both the top and bottom of a document.
- The preferred expansion method involved increasing the viewable content from the top in 2% steps to a maximum of 18.50% (12.25% top, 6.25% bottom).
- Users preferred not to fragment individual sentences, even if it slightly deviated from the target percentages.
Conclusions:
- The study provides specific, quantifiable user preferences for concertina browser summarization, aiding designers in creating enhanced user experiences.
- Findings are applicable to web documents under 600 words, suggesting a balance between information density and readability.
- Maintaining sentence integrity is a key user preference, highlighting the importance of semantic coherence in summarization algorithms.
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