1 What do People Recall about their Documents? Implications for Desktop Search Tools Tristan Blanc-Brude and Dominique L. Scapin INRIA ACM IUI 2007 (22%)

2 Objective Find out what users remember about their own documents Provide suggestions for improving the design of personal file search engines

3 Participants Seven researchers Seven members of administrative staff

4 Procedure Participants were interviewed about their work, environment and how they manage their files Participants talked about the workflow of their usual job tasks 30 documents belonging to each participant were selected by the experimenter based on task description – 9 physical, 21 electronic Documents include ones that the that were – consulted, modified or created by the participant – old, recent or recurring

5 Two Phases Recall Phase – determine what participants remember about their files Retrieval Phase – find out how participants search for personal files

6 Recall Phase Free-recall – let participants talk freely about what they remember about the files Cued-recall – give participants a list of file attributes and ask them to give the values

7 Recall Phase Attribute List Location – complete file path Type or Format – file type (e.g., PowerPoint) File Name Title – title of document inside file Size – number of pages, lines, not bytes Time – last usage Keywords – inside document Visual elements – graphics, tables, colors inside document Associated events – related to the last document usage (e.g., s, telephone calls) Links – other related documents Actions – operations performed on the document (e.g., printing, insertion, …, etc.)

8 Result: Frequency of Free-Recall Attributes Textual Content – 71.4% Visual Elements – 25% File type or format – 21.4%

9 Result: Frequency of Cued-Recall Attributes Recalled, but not necessarily correct

10 Result: Correctness of Recalled Attributes Partial Recall: A part but not all of the description is correct. Time and size given in ranges. Associated event, links and actions are left out, because they are hard to verify

11 Result: Frequently-used Descriptions Size – approximation and ranges (e.g. about 50 pages, between 10 to 20 pages) Time – periods (e.g. in February 2007) Visual elements – color, format and layout (e.g. double column), presence of objects other than text (e.g. pictures)

12 Retrieval Phase Main search method used by almost all participants – Browsing through folder hierarchy – Find the appropriate file in the folder

13 Result: Retrieval Phase 5 participants failed to find at least one document The hardest part is finding the correct file folder

14 Attribute Expression Recommendation Time – in period Size – approximation or interval Type – higher level category (e.g., slides instead of ppt)

15 Attribute Specification Flexibility Recommendation Wording – users can recall both correct and erroneous words Size – approximation and interval Time – variable time units (e.g. year, month, weeks)

16 Search Results Extensibility Recommendation Location – show files in subdirectories in case the user does not remember the correct directory Time – consider nearby dates in case the user does not remember the exact time Size – error tolerance of +- 35%

17 Content Visualization Recommendation Show previews of files other than the first pages, because first pages of similar documents can be very similar

18 Document Relationship Recommendation Show the relationship between documents (e.g. copy/paste)

19 Operation Log Recommendation Show a list of operations that had been done a document

20 Conclusion Make the easily-recalled attributes available to users as search options