How People Recognize Previously Seen Web Pages from Titles, URLs and Thumbnails

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How People Recognize Previously Seen Web Pages
from Titles, URLs and Thumbnails

• Shaun KaastenSaul GreenbergChristopher Edwards
• University of Calgary

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The Message

• We can improve our web browsers by quantifying
  how people recognize previously seen web pages
  from its thumbnail, title and URL representation

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Recognizing previously seen pages
Back/Forward Click until recognize
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Recognizing previously seen pages
Back/Forward Click until recognize
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Recognizing previously seen pages
Back/Forward Click until recognize
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Recognizing previously seen pages
Bookmarks / History Recognize page abstraction in
a list
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Recognizing titles
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Recognizing URLs
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Recognizing URLs
https//dciswp.admin.ucalgary.ca/cgi_bin/ndCGI.exe
/zsis_menu?SPIDERSESSIONFF7cqT5ddqyTXqApoH5f4
0KzBFJuCrEXVAK5bFwoE5dG5bVK5f5b60fPs60mpOXF
pq5b5bdZh5bDXq3f5dcuCy3fa40V7cryRsWgACDLqA
y5bjNh5bdlq5bmdQm7ddqEY5dw7efIryVIhbWsUBBnA
5biY60mNw5bGwo5eAPoR5f3f5bqfQCpCtqX3fQIGFf
5fEDw5bzHWs3fMPC5fb3fkra40we3fRY3fyPXU5bm
60s
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Recognizing page thumbnails
MosaicGAyers Stasko
WebViewCockburn, Greenberg et al
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Recognizing page thumbnails
DataMountainRobertson et al
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Recognizing page thumbnails
Unified HistoryKaasten and Greenberg
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Recognition and representation size

• Browsers limit representation size

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characters
characters
28 characters
30 characters
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Recognition and representation size

• Title and URL truncation

Titles URLs Right University of Calgary --
C... http//www.cpsc.ucalgary.c... Middle
University of...nce Home Page http//www.cp...pl
ab/software Left ...omputer Science Home
Page ....gary.ca/grouplab/software
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Recognition and representation size

• Browsers limit representation size

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Problem and research question

• Current history / bookmark systems are used
  infrequently (1-2).
• in part due to the difficulty of recognizing
  pages from its representation on a list.
• How well do people recognize previously seen
  pages from different sizes of its
• title
• URL
• thumbnail

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Experiment

• Participants
• 20 paid computer scientists
• The basic task
• given a small title, URL or thumbnail of a
  previously seen page, grow its size until you
  can
• recognize what web site it came from
• recognize exactly what page it is

x.htmlpware
gary.ca/saul/index.htmlnteraction and
Groupware
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Experiment

• Issue
• How did we prime subjects?
• A controlled approach
• give them artificial web site and navigation task

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Experiment

• Issue
• How did we prime subjects?
• Our naturalistic approach
• Use actual pages they had visited before the study

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Experiment

• Issue
• How did we prime subjects?
• Quasi experimental
• different pages
• different goals
• different times
• different reading duration

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Thresholds
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Thumbnail recognition and size
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Thumbnail recognition and size
Web site Exact page
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48
30
80
48
60
96
144
208
160
90
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Thumbnails how people recognize
Web site
Exact page
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Title recognition and size Web Site
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Title recognition and size Exact page
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URL recognition and size Web site
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URL recognition and size Exact page
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Title and URL length distribution
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Some stuff here.
b.
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A meaningful title
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Conclusion and application

• We quantified how people recognize previously
  seen web pages from its thumbnail, title and URL
  representation.
• We can use this to analyze or improve our
  existing browsers.

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• Shaun, what you can now do is switch to IE, bring
  up the explorer bar and say how recognizable the
  tiles of the history list is given that its
  default is x characters wide. Then bring up
  yours, and talk about the recognizability of the
  size of the small and popup thumbnails, as well
  as the titles/URLs, and why they show up in a
  popup. Also say how you could now redesign it,
  etc. This would give a nice ending.

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Conclusion