Improving Web usability through visualization

One reason for poor Web site usability is researchers' lack of understanding about how users surf for information. Predictive Web usage visualizations can help analysts uncover traffic patterns and usability problems. The author describes some of the techniques those in the User Interface Resea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE internet computing Vol. 6; no. 2; pp. 64 - 71
Main Author Chi, E.H.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Alamitos IEEE 01.03.2002
IEEE Computer Society
Subjects
Clustering algorithms
Computer simulation
Couplings
Data analysis
Data mining
Data visualization
Information analysis
Internet
Linkages
Mathematical models
Open source software
Predictive models
Software algorithms
Surf
Usability
User interfaces
Visualization
Websites
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Summary:One reason for poor Web site usability is researchers' lack of understanding about how users surf for information. Predictive Web usage visualizations can help analysts uncover traffic patterns and usability problems. The author describes some of the techniques those in the User Interface Research Group at PARC have developed to visualize content changes, linkage structures, site usage, and so on. He explores how these techniques can be used to identify specific usability problems at large Web sites. As part of his work, he have created a predictive visualization model called Information Scent, in which simulated users help uncover patterns and deficiencies in information accessibility. He demonstrates these techniques using a prototype system called ScentViz to illustrate how Web usage analysis can be enhanced using visualization methods.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
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ISSN:1089-7801
1941-0131
DOI:10.1109/4236.991445