Personalizing the User Interface

1
Personalizing the User Interface

• Catalogue search interfaces
• just how smart should they be?
• Workshop leader Ad Aerts (ad_at_aasup.nl)

2
The team

• Alberic Regent (University Leuven)
• Ramon Ros (Library Consortium of Catalonia)
• Frank Waajen (University of Wageningen)
• Miloš Petrovic (University of Maribor)
• Danica Radovanovic (University of Belgrade)
• Harry Janssen (University of Nijmegen)
• Bo Öhrström (Danish National Library Authority)
• Ad Aerts (AA Business Support)

3
Topics

• Search Interfaces
• Search entry
• Search strategies
• Search results

4
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?

5
The active interface

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

6
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

7
Prerequisites

• Procedures
• clear
• evident
• System help information
• Complete
• Concise
• Educate your users!!

8
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

9
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?

10
Authentification issues - privacy

• We want to know what our users do
• We have to store user 'behaviour' preferably
  without privacy-sensitive information

11
Search entry personalisationdependencies

• Level (novice-experienced user)
• Purpose (bibliographic information, loan)
• Preference for form or query language
• Language
• Physical limitation
• Sight
• Sound
• Material type

12
Search entry personalisation (continued)

• Elements to be personalised
• Fields/Tags
• Field/Tag Combinations
• Word order
• Word truncation
• Fulltext search
• Result representation

13
Search entry personalisation (continued)

• Inititial template
• Basic
• google like
• Intermediate
• ??
• Advanced
• Search specification fully user definable

14
Search results personalisationdependencies

• Level (novice-experienced user)
• Purpose (bibliographic information, loan)
• Preference for form or query language
• Language
• Physical limitation
• Sight
• Sound
• Material type

15
Search results personalisation

• Elements to be personalised
• Fields/Tags
• Presentation
• Order
• Selection

16
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

17
Search results personalisation (continued)

• Output type
• Print
• e-mail
• Web
• Downloadable (for import)

18
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

19
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