hotauthor: dontcheva_m* : Human-Computer Interaction Bibliography Search

[1] DiscoverySpace: Crowdsourced Suggestions Onboard Novices in Complex Software Demos / Fraser, C. / Dontcheva, Mira / Winnemoeller, Holger / Klemmer, Scott Companion Proceedings of ACM CSCW 2016 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing 2016-02-27 v.2 p.29-32

ACM Digital Library Link

[2] DataTone: Managing Ambiguity in Natural Language Interfaces for Data Visualization Session 7B: Neurons, Affect, Ambiguity / Gao, Tong / Dontcheva, Mira / Adar, Eytan / Liu, Zhicheng / Karahalios, Karrie G. Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2015-11-05 v.1 p.489-500

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Answering questions with data is a difficult and time-consuming process. Visual dashboards and templates make it easy to get started, but asking more sophisticated questions often requires learning a tool designed for expert analysts. Natural language interaction allows users to ask questions directly in complex programs without having to learn how to use an interface. However, natural language is often ambiguous. In this work we propose a mixed-initiative approach to managing ambiguity in natural language interfaces for data visualization. We model ambiguity throughout the process of turning a natural language query into a visualization and use algorithmic disambiguation coupled with interactive ambiguity widgets. These widgets allow the user to resolve ambiguities by surfacing system decisions at the point where the ambiguity matters. Corrections are stored as constraints and influence subsequent queries. We have implemented these ideas in a system, DataTone. In a comparative study, we find that DataTone is easy to learn and lets users ask questions without worrying about syntax and proper question form.

[3] Learning style similarity for searching infographics Learning for search, design, and simulation / Saleh, Babak / Dontcheva, Mira / Hertzmann, Aaron / Liu, Zhicheng Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on Graphics Interface 2015-06-03 p.59-64

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Infographics are complex graphic designs integrating text, images, charts and sketches. Despite the increasing popularity of infographics and the rapid growth of online design portfolios, little research investigates how we can take advantage of these design resources. In this paper we present a method for measuring the style similarity between infographics. Based on human perception data collected from crowdsourced experiments, we use computer vision and machine learning algorithms to learn a style similarity metric for infographic designs. We evaluate different visual features and learning algorithms and find that a combination of color histograms and Histograms-of-Gradients (HoG) features is most effective in characterizing the style of infographics. We demonstrate our similarity metric on a preliminary image retrieval test.

[4] MatrixWave: Visual Comparison of Event Sequence Data Visualizing Data / Zhao, Jian / Liu, Zhicheng / Dontcheva, Mira / Hertzmann, Aaron / Wilson, Alan Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2015-04-18 v.1 p.259-268

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Event sequence data analysis is common in many domains, including web and software development, transportation, and medical care. Few have investigated visualization techniques for comparative analysis of multiple event sequence datasets. Grounded in the real-world characteristics of web clickstream data, we explore visualization techniques for comparison of two clickstream datasets collected on different days or from users with different demographics. Through iterative design with web analysts, we designed MatrixWave, a matrix-based representation that allows analysts to get an overview of differences in traffic patterns and interactively explore paths through the website. We use color to encode differences and size to offer context over traffic volume. User feedback on MatrixWave is positive. Our study participants made fewer errors with MatrixWave and preferred it over the more familiar Sankey diagram.

[5] Motif: Supporting Novice Creativity through Expert Patterns Supporting Creativity through UX Design / Kim, Joy / Dontcheva, Mira / Li, Wilmot / Bernstein, Michael S. / Steinsapir, Daniela Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2015-04-18 v.1 p.1211-1220

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Creating personal narratives helps people build meaning around their experiences. However, novices lack the knowledge and experience to create stories with strong narrative structure. Current storytelling tools often structure novice work through templates, enforcing a linear creative process that asks novices for materials they may not have. In this paper, we propose scaffolding creative work using storytelling patterns extracted from stories created by experts. Patterns are modular sets of related camera shots that expert videographers commonly use to achieve a specific narrative function. After identifying a set of patterns from high-quality storytelling videos, we created Motif, a mobile video storytelling application that allows users to construct video stories by combining these patterns. By making existing solutions used by experts available to novices, we encourage capturing shots with story structure and narrative goals in mind. In a controlled study where we asked participants to create travel video stories, videos created with patterns conveyed stronger narrative structure and were considered higher quality by expert evaluators than videos created without patterns.

[6] CommandSpace: modeling the relationships between tasks, descriptions and features Modeling and prediction / Adar, Eytan / Dontcheva, Mira / Laput, Gierad Proceedings of the 2014 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2014-10-05 v.1 p.167-176

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Users often describe what they want to accomplish with an application in a language that is very different from the application's domain language. To address this gap between system and human language, we propose modeling an application's domain language by mining a large corpus of Web documents about the application using deep learning techniques. A high dimensional vector space representation can model the relationships between user tasks, system commands, and natural language descriptions and supports mapping operations, such as identifying likely system commands given natural language queries and identifying user tasks given a trace of user operations. We demonstrate the feasibility of this approach with a system, CommandSpace, for the popular photo editing application Adobe Photoshop. We build and evaluate several applications enabled by our model showing the power and flexibility of this approach.

[7] Combining crowdsourcing and learning to improve engagement and performance Learning and games / Dontcheva, Mira / Morris, Robert R. / Brandt, Joel R. / Gerber, Elizabeth M. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2014 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2014-04-26 v.1 p.3379-3388

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Crowdsourcing complex creative tasks remains difficult, in part because these tasks require skilled workers. Most crowdsourcing platforms do not help workers acquire the skills necessary to accomplish complex creative tasks. In this paper, we describe a platform that combines learning and crowdsourcing to benefit both the workers and the requesters. Workers gain new skills through interactive step-by-step tutorials and test their knowledge by improving real-world images submitted by requesters. In a series of three deployments spanning two years, we varied the design of our platform to enhance the learning experience and improve the quality of the crowd work. We tested our approach in the context of LevelUp for Photoshop, which teaches people how to do basic photograph improvement tasks using Adobe Photoshop. We found that by using our system workers gained new skills and produced high-quality edits for requested images, even if they had little prior experience editing images.

[8] DemoCut: generating concise instructional videos for physical demonstrations Visualization & video / Chi, Pei-Yu / Liu, Joyce / Linder, Jason / Dontcheva, Mira / Li, Wilmot / Hartmann, Bjoern Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2013-10-08 v.1 p.141-150

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Amateur instructional videos often show a single uninterrupted take of a recorded demonstration without any edits. While easy to produce, such videos are often too long as they include unnecessary or repetitive actions as well as mistakes. We introduce DemoCut, a semi-automatic video editing system that improves the quality of amateur instructional videos for physical tasks. DemoCut asks users to mark key moments in a recorded demonstration using a set of marker types derived from our formative study. Based on these markers, the system uses audio and video analysis to automatically organize the video into meaningful segments and apply appropriate video editing effects. To understand the effectiveness of DemoCut, we report a technical evaluation of seven video tutorials created with DemoCut. In a separate user evaluation, all eight participants successfully created a complete tutorial with a variety of video editing effects using our system.

[9] Toward a cognitive theory of creativity support Dimensions of creative work / Davis, Nicholas / Winnemöller, Holger / Dontcheva, Mira / Do, Ellen Yi-Luen Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition 2013-06-17 p.13-22

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: We present the beginnings of a Cognitive Theory of Creativity Support aimed specifically at understanding novices and their needs. Our theory identifies unique difficulties novices face and reasons that may keep them from engaging in creative endeavors, such as fear of failure, time commitment, and lack of skill. To test our theory, we use it to analyze existing creativity support tools from multiple domains. We also describe the design and initial implementation of a creativity support tool based on our theory. The creativity support tool, called StorySketch, is designed to empower storytellers without graphical skills to engage in visual storytelling.

[10] PixelTone: a multimodal interface for image editing Video showcase presentations / Linder, Jason / Laput, Gierad / Dontcheva, Mira / Wilensky, Gregg / Chang, Walter / Agarwala, Aseem / Adar, Eytan Extended Abstracts of ACM CHI'13 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2013-04-27 v.2 p.2829-2830

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Photo editing can be a challenging task, and it becomes even more difficult on the small, portable screens of mobile devices that are now frequently used to capture and edit images. To address this problem we present PixelTone, a multimodal photo editing interface that combines speech and direct manipulation. In this video, we demonstrate how our system uses natural language for expressing users' desired changes to an image. We also demonstrate how we combine natural language and touch gestures for creating named references and sketching to localize image operations to specific regions.

[11] PixelTone: a multimodal interface for image editing Papers: performing interaction / Laput, Gierad P. / Dontcheva, Mira / Wilensky, Gregg / Chang, Walter / Agarwala, Aseem / Linder, Jason / Adar, Eytan Proceedings of ACM CHI 2013 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2013-04-27 v.1 p.2185-2194

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Photo editing can be a challenging task, and it becomes even more difficult on the small, portable screens of mobile devices that are now frequently used to capture and edit images. To address this problem we present PixelTone, a multimodal photo editing interface that combines speech and direct manipulation. We observe existing image editing practices and derive a set of principles that guide our design. In particular, we use natural language for expressing desired changes to an image, and sketching to localize these changes to specific regions. To support the language commonly used in photo-editing we develop a customized natural language interpreter that maps user phrases to specific image processing operations. Finally, we perform a user study that evaluates and demonstrates the effectiveness of our interface.

[12] CrowdCamp 2013: rapidly iterating crowd ideas Workshop summaries / Chilton, Lydia / André, Paul / Bigham, Jeffrey / Dontcheva, Mira / Gerber, Elizabeth / Gilbert, Eric Proceedings of ACM CSCW'13 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2013-02-23 v.2 p.313-314

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: The rapidly growing field of collective intelligence -- encompassing crowdsourcing, human computation, and social computing -- is having a tremendous impact on the way we work, live, and play. Building on the success of a CHI 2012 CrowdCamp, this two-day event focuses on developing ideas into concrete outputs: in-depth thoughts on hard problems, paper or coded prototypes, experiment design and data mining. We will bring together researchers and industry experts to discuss future visions and make tangible headway on those visions, as well as seeding collaboration. The outputs from discussion, brainstorming, and building will persist after the workshop for attendees and the community to view.

[13] MixT: automatic generation of step-by-step mixed media tutorials Tutorials & learning / Chi, Pei-Yu / Ahn, Sally / Ren, Amanda / Dontcheva, Mira / Li, Wilmot / Hartmann, Björn Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2012-10-07 v.1 p.93-102

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Users of complex software applications often learn concepts and skills through step-by-step tutorials. Today, these tutorials are published in two dominant forms: static tutorials composed of images and text that are easy to scan, but cannot effectively describe dynamic interactions; and video tutorials that show all manipulations in detail, but are hard to navigate. We hypothesize that a mixed tutorial with static instructions and per-step videos can combine the benefits of both formats. We describe a comparative study of static, video, and mixed image manipulation tutorials with 12 participants and distill design guidelines for mixed tutorials. We present MixT, a system that automatically generates step-by-step mixed media tutorials from user demonstrations. MixT segments screencapture video into steps using logs of application commands and input events, applies video compositing techniques to focus on salient information, and highlights interactions through mouse trails. Informal evaluation suggests that automatically generated mixed media tutorials were as effective in helping users complete tasks as tutorials that were created manually.

[14] Tutorial-based interfaces for cloud-enabled applications Tutorials & learning / Laput, Gierad / Adar, Eytan / Dontcheva, Mira / Li, Wilmot Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2012-10-07 v.1 p.113-122

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Powerful image editing software like Adobe Photoshop and GIMP have complex interfaces that can be hard to master. To help users perform image editing tasks, we introduce tutorial-based applications (tapps) that retain the step-by-step structure and descriptive text of tutorials but can also automatically apply tutorial steps to new images. Thus, tapps can be used to batch process many images automatically, similar to traditional macros. Tapps also support interactive exploration of parameters, automatic variations, and direct manipulation (e.g., selection, brushing). Another key feature of tapps is that they execute on remote instances of Photoshop, which allows users to edit their images on any Web-enabled device. We demonstrate a working prototype system called TappCloud for creating, managing and using tapps. Initial user feedback indicates support for both the interactive features of tapps and their ability to automate image editing. We conclude with a discussion of approaches and challenges of pushing monolithic direct-manipulation GUIs to the cloud.

[15] Discovery-based games for learning software Teaching with games / Dong, Tao / Dontcheva, Mira / Joseph, Diana / Karahalios, Karrie / Newman, Mark / Ackerman, Mark Proceedings of ACM CHI 2012 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2012-05-05 v.1 p.2083-2086

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: We propose using discovery-based learning games to teach people how to use complex software. Specifically, we developed Jigsaw, a learning game that asks players to solve virtual jigsaw puzzles using tools in Adobe Photoshop. We conducted an eleven-person lab study of the prototype, and found the game to be an effective learning medium that can complement demonstration-based tutorials. Not only did the participants learn about new tools and techniques while actively solving the puzzles in Jigsaw, but they also recalled techniques that they had learned previously but had forgotten.

[16] MixT: automatic generation of step-by-step mixed media tutorials Work-in-progress / Chi, Pei-Yu / Ahn, Sally / Ren, Amanda / Hartmann, Björn / Dontcheva, Mira / Li, Wilmot Extended Abstracts of ACM CHI'12 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2012-05-05 v.2 p.1499-1504

ACM Digital Library Citation

Summary: As software interfaces become more complicated, users rely on tutorials to learn, creating an increasing demand for effective tutorials. Existing tutorials, however, are limited in their presentation: Static step-by-step tutorials are easy to scan but hard to create and don't always give all of the necessary information for how to accomplish a step. In contrast, video tutorials provide very detailed information and are easy to create, but they are hard to scan as the video-player timeline does not give an overview of the entire task. We present MixT, which automatically generates mixed media tutorials that combine the strengths of these tutorial types. MixT tutorials include step-by-step text descriptions and images that are easy to scan and short videos for each step that provide additional context and detail as needed. We ground our design in a formative study that shows that mixed-media tutorials outperform both static and video tutorials.

[17] CrowdCamp: rapidly iterating ideas related to collective intelligence & crowdsourcing Workshop summaries / André, Paul / Bernstein, Michael / Dontcheva, Mira / Gerber, Elizabeth / Kittur, Aniket / Miller, Rob Extended Abstracts of ACM CHI'12 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2012-05-05 v.2 p.2687-2690

ACM Digital Library Citation

Summary: The field of collective intelligence -- encompassing aspects of crowdsourcing, human computation, and social computing -- is having tremendous impact on our lives, and the fields are rapidly growing. We propose a hands-on event that takes the main benefits of a workshop -- provocative discussion and community building -- and allows time to focus on developing ideas into actual outputs: experiment designs, in-depth thoughts on wicked problems, paper or coded prototypes. We will bring together researchers to discuss future visions and make tangible headway on those visions, as well as seeding collaboration. The outputs from brainstorming, discussion, and building will persist after the workshop for attendees and the community to view, and will be written up.

[18] Photoshop with friends: a synchronous learning community for graphic design Demonstration / Kim, Juho / Malley, Benjamin / Brandt, Joel / Dontcheva, Mira / Joseph, Diana / Gajos, Krzysztof Z. / Miller, Robert C. Companion Proceedings of ACM CSCW'12 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work 2012-02-11 v.2 p.271-272

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Photoshop with Friends is an online community of learners exchanging just-in-time help on graphic design tasks. The system attempts to provide an interactive, visual, context-aware, and personalized mode of learning. Developed as a Facebook application, Photoshop with Friends allows users to help each other in live sessions, with built-in screen sharing, recording, and voice chat support. Major design decisions are guided by two laboratory studies that identified challenges in learning graphic design skills on the web.

[19] Pause-and-play: automatically linking screencast video tutorials with applications Social learning / Pongnumkul, Suporn / Dontcheva, Mira / Li, Wilmot / Wang, Jue / Bourdev, Lubomir / Avidan, Shai / Cohen, Michael F. Proceedings of the 201 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology1 2011-10-16 v.1 p.135-144

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: Video tutorials provide a convenient means for novices to learn new software applications. Unfortunately, staying in sync with a video while trying to use the target application at the same time requires users to repeatedly switch from the application to the video to pause or scrub backwards to replay missed steps. We present Pause-and-Play, a system that helps users work along with existing video tutorials. Pause-and-Play detects important events in the video and links them with corresponding events in the target application as the user tries to replicate the depicted procedure. This linking allows our system to automatically pause and play the video to stay in sync with the user. Pause-and-Play also supports convenient video navigation controls that are accessible from within the target application and allow the user to easily replay portions of the video without switching focus out of the application. Finally, since our system uses computer vision to detect events in existing videos and leverages application scripting APIs to obtain real time usage traces, our approach is largely independent of the specific target application and does not require access or modifications to application source code. We have implemented Pause-and-Play for two target applications, Google SketchUp and Adobe Photoshop, and we report on a user study that shows our system improves the user experience of working with video tutorials.

[20] Affective computational priming and creativity Emotional states / Lewis, Sheena / Dontcheva, Mira / Gerber, Elizabeth Proceedings of ACM CHI 2011 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2011-05-07 v.1 p.735-744

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: While studies have shown that affect influences creativity, few investigate how affect influences creative performance with creativity support tools. Drawing from methods commonly used in psychology research, we present affective computational priming, a new method for manipulating affect using digitally embedded stimuli. We present two studies that explore computational techniques for inducing positive, neutral, and negative affect and examine their impact on idea generation with creativity support tools. Our results suggest that positive affective computational priming positively influences the quality of ideas generated. We discuss opportunities for future HCI research and offer practical applications of affective computational priming.

[21] Creating collections with automatic suggestions and example-based refinement Intelligence / Secord, Adrian / Winnemoeller, Holger / Li, Wilmot / Dontcheva, Mira Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology 2010-10-03 p.249-258

Keywords: collections, constraint solver, keyword search

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: To create collections, like music playlists from personal media libraries, users today typically do one of two things. They either manually select items one-by-one, which can be time consuming, or they use an example-based recommendation system to automatically generate a collection. While such automatic engines are convenient, they offer the user limited control over how items are selected. Based on prior research and our own observations of existing practices, we propose a semi-automatic interface for creating collections that combines automatic suggestions with manual refinement tools. Our system includes a keyword query interface for specifying high-level collection preferences (e.g., "some rock, no Madonna, lots of U2,") as well as three example-based collection refinement techniques: 1) a suggestion widget for adding new items in-place in the context of the collection; 2) a mechanism for exploring alternatives for one or more collection items; and 3) a two-pane linked interface that helps users browse their libraries based on any selected collection item. We demonstrate our approach with two applications. SongSelect helps users create music playlists, and PhotoSelect helps users select photos for sharing. Initial user feedback is positive and confirms the need for semi-automated tools that give users control over automatically created collections.

[22] Example-centric programming: integrating web search into the development environment End-user programming I / Brandt, Joel / Dontcheva, Mira / Weskamp, Marcos / Klemmer, Scott R. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2010 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2010-04-10 v.1 p.513-522

Keywords: example-centric development

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: The ready availability of online source-code examples has fundamentally changed programming practices. However, current search tools are not designed to assist with programming tasks and are wholly separate from editing tools. This paper proposes that embedding a task-specific search engine in the development environment can significantly reduce the cost of finding information and thus enable programmers to write better code more easily. This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of Blueprint, a Web search interface integrated into the Adobe Flex Builder development environment that helps users locate example code. Blueprint automatically augments queries with code context, presents a code-centric view of search results, embeds the search experience into the editor, and retains a link between copied code and its source. A comparative laboratory study found that Blueprint enables participants to write significantly better code and find example code significantly faster than with a standard Web browser. Analysis of three months of usage logs with 2,024 users suggests that task-specific search interfaces can significantly change how and when people search the Web.

[23] EDITED BOOK No Code Required: Giving Users Tools to Transform the Web / Cypher, Allen / Dontcheva, Mira / Lau, Tessa / Nichols, Jeffrey 2010 p.512 Morgan Kaufmann Publishers

ISBN: 0-12-381541-X, 978-0-12-381541-5

Companion Web Site

Introduction
	End User Programming on the Web
		+ Cypher, Allen
	Why We Customize the Web
		+ Miller, Robert
I. End User Programming Languages for the Web
	Sloppy Programming
		+ Little, Greg
	Mixing the reactive with the personal: Opportunities for end user programming in Personal information management (system)
		+ Van Kleek, Max
	Going beyond PBD: A Play-by-Play and Mixed-initiative Approach (system)
		+ Jung, Hyuckchul
	Rewriting the Web with Chickenfoot (system)
		+ Miller, Robert
	A Goal-Oriented Web Browser (system)
		+ Faaborg, Alexander
II. Systems and Applications
	Clip, Connect, Clone: Combining Application Elements to Build Custom Interfaces for Information Access (system)
		+ Fujima, Jun
	Mash Maker (system)
		+ Ennals, Robert
	Collaborative scripting on the web (system)
		+ Lau, Tessa
	Programming by a Sample: Rapidly Creating Web Applications with d.mix (system)
		+ Hartmann, Björn
	Highlight: End User Mobilization of Existing Web Sites (system)
		+ Nichols, Jeffrey
	Subjunctive Interfaces for the Web
		+ Lunzer, Aran
	From Web Summaries to Search Templates: Automation for Personal Web Content (system)
		+ Dontcheva, Mira
	Access to the Temporal Web Through Zoetrope (system)
		+ Adar, Eytan
	Enabling End Users to Independently Build Accessibility into the Web
		+ Bigham, Jeffrey
	Social Accessibility: A Collaborative Approach For Improving Web Accessibility (system)
		+ Borodin, Yevgen
III. Data Management and Interoperability
	A World Wider than the Web: End User Programming Across Multiple Domains (system)
		+ Haines, Will
	Knowing What You're Talking About: Natural Language Programming of a Multi-Player Online Game (system)
		+ Lieberman, Henry
IV. User Studies
	Mashups for Web-Active End Users
		+ Zang, Nan
	Mashed layers and muddled models: debugging mashup applications
		+ Jones, M. Cameron
	Reuse in the world of end-user programmers
		+ Scaffidi, Christopher
	Using Web Search to Write Programs
		+ Brandt, Joel

[24] Two studies of opportunistic programming: interleaving web foraging, learning, and writing code Software development / Brandt, Joel / Guo, Philip J. / Lewenstein, Joel / Dontcheva, Mira / Klemmer, Scott R. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009-04-04 v.1 p.1589-1598

Keywords: copy-and-paste, opportunistic programming, prototyping

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: This paper investigates the role of online resources in problem solving. We look specifically at how programmers -- an exemplar form of knowledge workers -- opportunistically interleave Web foraging, learning, and writing code. We describe two studies of how programmers use online resources. The first, conducted in the lab, observed participants' Web use while building an online chat room. We found that programmers leverage online resources with a range of intentions: They engage in just-in-time learning of new skills and approaches, clarify and extend their existing knowledge, and remind themselves of details deemed not worth remembering. The results also suggest that queries for different purposes have different styles and durations. Do programmers' queries "in the wild" have the same range of intentions, or is this result an artifact of the particular lab setting? We analyzed a month of queries to an online programming portal, examining the lexical structure, refinements made, and result pages visited. Here we also saw traits that suggest the Web is being used for learning and reminding. These results contribute to a theory of online resource usage in programming, and suggest opportunities for tools to facilitate online knowledge work.

[25] Attaching UI enhancements to websites with end users Advanced web scenarios / Toomim, Michael / Drucker, Steven M. / Dontcheva, Mira / Rahimi, Ali / Thomson, Blake / Landay, James A. Proceedings of ACM CHI 2009 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2009-04-04 v.1 p.1859-1868

Keywords: end-user programming, mashups, programming by example, web data extraction

ACM Digital Library Link

Summary: We present reform, a step toward write-once apply-anywhere user interface enhancements. The reform system envisions roles for both programmers and end users in enhancing existing websites to support new goals. First, a programmer authors a traditional mashup or browser extension, but they do not write a web scraper. Instead they use reform, which allows novice end users to attach the enhancement to their favorite sites with a scraping by-example interface. reform makes enhancements easier to program while also carrying the benefit that end users can apply the enhancements to any number of new websites. We present reform's architecture, user interface, interactive by-example extraction algorithm for novices, and evaluation, along with five example reform enabled enhancements.