Online Glossary Tools for Technical Reading

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Online Glossary Tools for Technical Reading

• Presented by
• Mona Noor

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Introduction

• A vast amount of online information currently
  exists
• A large number of tools for viewing this
  information exist
• Users tend to adopt a new technology only if it
  is an improvement over known alternatives
• Information could alternatively be viewed using
  traditional paper means
• Hypertextual Linking increases the ease with
  which users can perform information retrieval

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Why Use Glossaries?

• Used to facilitate reading by clarifying terms
• Electronic glossaries can be integrated into text
• Counterparts in traditional text include
• Glossary provided as another section of the main
  text
• Notes in the margins made by previous readers or
  author
• Footnotes or endnotes

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Usability Issues

• Several glossary styles have previously been
  studied
• Factors that have been studied include
• Integrated glossary links vs. Separate lists of
  glossary terms
• Visually marking glossary terms vs. Leaving terms
  unmarked
• Pop-up entries vs. Entries presented in a
  separate frame

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Automatic Link Generation

• Link generation involves several complexities
• Terms overlapping
• Terms encompassing other terms
• Terms in modified forms
• Synonyms, acronyms, and abbreviations of terms
• Several approaches exist to deal with these
  problems

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Automatic Link Generation (2)

• Approaches to link generation include
• Estimating similarities using a simple formula
  between terms in the text and glossary
• Using vector-space models to represent term
  vectors
• Using similarity measures to compare clusters of
  terms
• Trade-off exists between speed and sophistication
  of results

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The Reading Process

• Reading style varies with task
• Reading style varies with user
• Cognitive overhead impacts reading style
• Article format has an impact on reading speed
• Design decisions must depend on reading style

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User Study (Purpose)

• To determine whether the presence of a glossary
  tool is beneficial to users
• To determine whether a user updateable glossary
  is more useful than an automatic glossary or vice
  versa

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User Study (Methodology)

• Participants were asked to
• Complete a preliminary questionnaire
• Read a selected article with the given software
• Complete a post-test questionnaire
• Participants were asked to
• Read an article without a glossary tool
• Read a glossary with either the automatic
  glossary tool or the user-updateable tool

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User Study (Uzilla)

• Instrumented browser for usability experiments
• Logs user interactions with the browser
• Simplifies data collection and analysis

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User Study (Measures of Evaluation)

• Difference in scores when a glossary was present
  and when there was no glossary tool
• Time taken to read articles
• Time taken to complete questionnaires
• Number of glossary entries that were viewed
• Number of glossary entries that were modified or
  deleted
• Number of glossary entries that were created

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Results

• Users did not employ updateable functionality
• Descriptive Results
• Users found the tool useful and easy to learn
• Analytical Results
• The presence of a glossary tool improves user
  performance
• The presence of a glossary tool reduces user speed

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Next Steps

• Conduct studies where users are given more
  motivation to employ updateable features
• Conduct studies where users are given more
  motivation to click on glossary terms
• Conduct studies to determine whether highlighting
  terms had an impact on performance

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The End