ArticleRead (19):GEON: Making sense of the myriad resources, researchers and concepts that comprise a geoscience cyberinfrastructure

GEON: Making sense of the myriad resources, researchers and concepts that comprise a geoscience cyberinfrastructure, By Mark Gahegan, Junyan Luo, Stephen D. Weaver, William Pike, Tawan Banchuen, in Computers & Geosciences, Vol. 35, Issue 4, 836-854, (Apr. 2009)

There are two main considerations for exploring the geoscientific meaning of e-resources: the top-down defined domain ontology and conventional metadata, and the bottom-up emergent meaning carried in how the resource are used by users (epistemology: which can be captured in workflows, in provenance meta-data and even in the interactions between people.).

The primary argument of this article is that whether ontological or epistemological, no single one of these web threads is sufficient to carry the essence of meaning. A review of ontology base on this article is made in a SWOT analysis in the figure below, where current engineering methods are considered along with those of the data integration (the Strength table).

Using a case study of a knowledge portal GEON to illustrate their main arguments, problems of accessing to e-resources are:

(1) large resource
(2) dynamic nature of catalogs
(3) varieties of search strategies of user needs
(4) meanings of resource

Suggested solutions to these difficulties include:

(1)adopting a visualize-on-demand strategy, and visualizing multiple perspectives which highlight connections or overlaps among the e-resources,
(2) classifying resources into 4 categories and 18 subcategories, and translating resource descriptions into RDF triples.

Problems (3) and (4) are tackled together by augmenting ontologies. The authors augment ontologies by adding situational knowledge initiated from:

(i) meaning resides in a nexus of interactions (Whitehead, 1929-1997), thus a knowledge nexus can support multiple strands of meaning.

(ii) semiotics that according to different subject of interest, nodes can change their semiotic role in the nexus (Sowa, 1999-2002).

In short, the authors add use-cases, provenance data, social networks and workflows, to ontology, through the use of Perspectives(global and local), as a pragmatic aspect to understand meaning and definition of e-resource. In particular, perspective filters, defined against an OWL model, facilitate examination of a subset of connections within a complex concept space in a manner that suits thematic exploration.

p.s. GEON is an open collaborative project started in 2002 funded under the NSF Information Technology Research (ITR) program . The aim is to develop CyberInfrastructure, a vision in the U.S. while e-Science is in the Europe, that the need of a comprehensive infrastructure to capitalize on dramatic advances in information technology in support of data sharing and integration.

ArticleRead (15): User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View

User Acceptance of Information Technology: Toward a Unified View. by Venkatesh, V. Morris, M. G. Davis, G. B. Davis, F. D. In MIS Quarterly, 2003, Vol. 27; No.3, pp 425-478

The current information management issues are primarily based on the behavioral science. The primary goal of Venkatesh et al. (2003) is to accomplish a coherent picture of the main lines of the work on individual acceptance of information technology, and further integrate them into a unified theoretical model: the Unified theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT).

The authors review the theoretical and empirical literature on the information technology acceptance models with valuable discussions on 8 major models. After the work of model comparison, which are identified similarly in roots from theories of psychology and sociology, empirical work concerned with the adjustment of "usage" (the dependent variable) and "the role of intention" (a predictor of behavior) to 32 relevant constructs across 8 models is considered. Data from 4 organizations over a 6-month period with 3 points of measurement is utilized to test these relevant constructs.

Results show that:

First, at least one construct of each model was significant and influential, and there are 7 constructs identified as direct determinants of intention or usage.

Second, several other constructs were significantly fading out.

Third, the key differences are settings in constructs related to social influence between voluntary vs. mandatory settings.

Based on these three empirical findings, 4 key moderators (gender, age, experience and voluntariness of use) are provided to justified four main constructs: (1)performance expectancy, (2) effort expectancy, (3) social influence (4) facilitating conditions. The proposed model was later justified by two new organization data.

Finally. the perceptive reader might recognize some likeness of the four constructs of this UTAUT model with two main constructs of the Online Community Framework (OCF): sociability and usability (de Souza and Preece, 2004).

OCF is based on the theory of Human Computer Interaction and focus on two main dimensions: (1) the analyzing of online community their social interaction within the community (sociability); and (2) the understanding of what will happen at the human-computer interface (usability).

While the UTAUT and associated user behavior models intend to serve to predict user intention and usage as a result to provide prescriptive guidance for organization managers and system designers, the OCF-based analyses as to understand how technology may or must be used to improve usability and sociability and further to prevent problems in computer-mediated communication and social interaction brings about different theoretical perspectives in which the semiotic engineering can be served as a potentially valuableble alternative to view management information systems.

ArticleRead (13): User Experience at Google: focus on the user and all else will follow

User Experience at Google: focus on the user and all else will follow. by Au, I., et al. (2008) In CHI 2008 Proceedings Extended Abstracts, ACM Press (2008), pp 3681-3686

Which research approaches should ensure that user experiences are interpreted to reflect underlined norms of online users, and promise a better identification for designers to predict user behaviors in the system design process? The case of Google in this article demonstrates a multi-method of user experience based on its corporate philosophy: “Follow the user and all else will follow”.

On the one hand, Google have traditionally sought to adopt their data-driven approach by applying web analytics of quantitative investigation in reflecting what is happening. On the other hand, built on the qualitative approach, Google interpret contextual factors of why users interact with the system designs via field research, diary studies, face-to-face interview. Such an approach is applied by the Google user experience (UX) team in exploring user behavior of Google Maps for the mobile application. They follow a method called Mediated Data Collection approach, in which participants and mobile technologies are assumed to mediate data collection about use in natural settings. Therefore, methods such as prior research on log analysis, recorded usage, focus group study, or field trial, telephone interviews, lab debriefs are combined to utilize the investigations on user behaviour.

This article stresses the bottom-up company culture as a key for designers and project managers to understand the essence of user experience. Three techniques are employed by: (1) injecting the corporate DNA to educate and train engineers and PMs about user experience (i.e. the ‘Life of a User’ training program and ‘Field Fridays’) (2) scaling to support hundreds of projects by UX team (3) helping focus projects on user needs by UX team or user research knowledge base.

Unlike the traditional desktop software design updated on annual basis, Google UX team practices some agile techniques to respond the rapid web cycles. For examples, solutions include guerilla usability testing, prototyping on the fly, online experimentation or enabling a live instant messaging dialogue between observers and moderator during lab-based testing.

The above three approaches are also combined with a global product perspective of designing for multiple countries. In sum, these 4 combinations of the Google case provide us an alternate analytic framework, and best enlist the methodologies for the studying of online user experience practically and implicitly.

ArticleRead (12): The credibility of volunteered geographic information

The credibility of volunteered geographic information, By Andrew J. Flanagin and Miriam J. Metzger, in GeoJournal (2008) 72:137–148

The study of Flanagin and Metzger (2008) was to exam the issues of information and source credibility in the context of volunteered geographic environment (VGI).

VGI with its similar concepts such as GIS/2, neogeography, or ‘‘geography without geographers’’ has been regarded as an extension of public participation geographic information systems (PPGIS); collaborative GIS; participatory GIS; Community Integrated GIS (CIGIS) to the general public. While the advance of social computing has parallel effects on the production and availability of user-generated geo data, the need to re-conceptualize the traditional definitions of information and source credibility has been proposed here.

The credibility of VGI is strongly suggestive based on two concepts from Goodchild(2007)'s "humans as sensors" as well as the perspective of social science which the credibility is "a subjective perception on the part of the information receiver". In contrast, the credibility of VGI taken from the notion of "credibility-as-perception" is functioned as the relatively objective properties of information, rather than "a subjective perception" while compared with the traditional geo information formed by a few individual authority perceptions.

The overall recommendations for the credibility judgments of VGI are listed eight points in the figure below. Research directions such as: on the user motivations; "credibility transfer" phenomena (geo data has been perceived more objective than other forms of user-generated data); market implications; measurement issues (e.g. the provenance of VGI); or the effects of VGI on the social, educational, and political contexts are suggested.

ArticleRead (11): Assertion and authority: the science of user-generated geographic content

Assertion and authority: the science of user-generated geographic content. By M.F. Goodchild (2008) Proceedings of the Colloquium for Andrew U. Frank's 60th Birthday. GeoInfo 39. Department of Geoinformation and Cartography, Vienna University of Technology.

Goodchild's article examines what user-generated geo information (volunteered geographic information/ VGI) are different from traditional & professional geo information. The main assumption Goodchild has proposed is that the individual is similar to an expert in the geography of his or her activity space, based on the concept of individual geographic familiarity. The geo production contributed by general people (neo-explorers who mainly take the inductive role ) are in the levels of raw data observations and information for specific use, while the level of geo knowledge are produced by professionals (taking both inductive and deductive roles of empiricism) through theories, models, and formal procedures conducting analytic capabilities and functions.

As the traditional data quality can be controlled by the authority of mapping agencies through formal spefifications, production mechanisms, and programs or project control, Goodchild suggests two mechanisms for VIG quality control. First, he notes the value of local expertise in the sense of community mapping while national mapping agencies ignore them in the mapping and editing process. Second, he offers a structure of data editing process by building several hierarchy of editor levels based on the use of local expertise to exam the data quality. As a better framework through semiotic analysis can provide a systematic structure of this issue, we close our review with a table utilizing semiotics to fully understand the potentials and implications of this article.

ArticleRead (6): The folksonomy tag cloud: when is it useful?

The folksonomy tag cloud: when is it useful? By James Sinclair and Michael Cardew-Hall ,Journal of Information Science 2008 34: 15-29

With the assumption of folksonomy systems affecting user perceptions and patterns, it is interesting to see what empirically can be found from a user interface point to see how tag cloud impact users in information exploration. Sinclair and Cardew-Hall in this paper clearly conclude their findings in small-scale enterprise context, which supports arguments of Mathes (2004) and Brooks & Montanex (2006), that the usability of tag cloud is a social navigation aid tool when broad, general or vague information exploration is taken up. Increasingly, evidences from empirical survey support the function of tagging for broad categorization. [e.g. Noll and Meinel, 2007]

A proper appreciation of this research with which the need to evaluate Tag Cloud in its usability is asserted in its visual summary design, and its ability to serve for non-specific information discovery. Such results are also given weights to a substantial literature reviews of many pro-and-con characteristics of tag clouds. Here, we try to summarize both ends in usability and sociability analysis in the table below.


A very interesting section of this article is that: only 2 out of 89 participants with high level computer background in their experiment are familiar with the tagging mechanism. This percentage is surprisingly low while comparing to the overview that almost one third of online American users have used tagging mechanisms. Out of most curiosity is that since this study is a research on user patterns and perception, there is a missing data analysis to undertake. While the study has concluded that the cost of a query is reduced in the tag cloud scenario (compared with more typing efforts in search box), should the mean tags tagged per article of each participant need to be considered as one of the factors in the cost analysis? Indeed, this remains a question to explore.

ArticleRead (5): Clustering versus Faceted Categories for Information Exploration

Clustering versus faceted categories for information exploration, By MA Hearst, in Communications of the ACM, Volume 49 , Issue 4 (April 2006)

Based on usability perspective, this paper reveals the complex of two grouping mechanisms: clustering and faceted classification.

Traditional top-down and predefined methods like clustering approaches have benefits in their algorithms and automaticabilities while in some bottom up user-oriented methods, the hierarchical faceted categories (HFC) as the author has proposed in particular, is in favour of locating user interest through some manual setting of category hierarchies which are associated with multiple facets.

This paper first discusses some advantages and disadvantage of clustering. Simple clustering algorithms for designers and clarifying vague queries for users by returning the dominant themes as results are main reasons lead designers to take the clustering approach. However, empirical evidence does not support these usabilities. Second, the author explains why clustering method is not a useful and effective tool in information exploration and proposes the hierarchical faceted categories (HFC) approach with an introduction to their prototype: The Flamenco Open Source faceted classification project.

Table 1 shows the comparision of clustering and faceted classification

ArticleRead (4) : Collaborative Tagging and Semiotic Dynamics

Collaborative Tagging and Semiotic Dynamics, By C Cattuto, V Loreto, L Pietronero ,Arxiv preprint cs.CY/0605015, 2006
From the Cover: Semiotic dynamics and collaborative tagging, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2007 - National Acad Sciences

In “Collaborative Tagging and Semiotic Dynamics”, Cattuto, Loreto and Pietronero set down what a user pattern looks like in a social tagging system through empirical statistic analysis of tag co-occurrence. The Yule-Simon model on probability and statistics basis has been used to investigate the long-term memory of users’ tag-vocabulary activities in one of the social tagging system, del.icio.us. A semiotic conceptual model for the tri-partite graph to structure a post as (user, resource,{tag}) is proposed. Therefore, the tri-partite concept which is original from semiotic dynamic literatures is illustrated in the tile as a highlight.

In order to overcome the need for complexity of experimental data, this analysis procedure employs a tag-centric construction view on del.icio.us system. By factoring out two parameters of (users, resource) and adding the set of time parameter from the post, the results of co-occurrence of tagging activities are shown to be consistent with available theoretical calculations in Power Law and Zipf’s Law. Typical applications of utilizing these two statistical theories are well recognized in phenomenon analysis such as in natural language; self-organization and human activity; access patterns; as well as memory–kernel of cognitive psychology. This joint experiment with the well-proved theories offers an alternative method to explore social tagging phenomenon, and for our review to add value on their ideas and research attentions on user behaviors and semiotic concept.

Controversially, however, the research method is likely to be criticized from the semiotic point of views.

First of all, the confusion of two semiotic schools is presented. The authors intend and develop the tri-partite graph from semiotic dynamic concept which follows Charles Sanders Peirce’s (1839-1914) sign theory remarkably in its basic triadic relation within a sign, namely (Represent, Object, Interpretant). The authors have attempted to adopt this triadic elements and rephrase them from (forms {words}, referents {objects}, meanings {categories}) of Steels and Kaplan (1999) to (user, resource,{tag}) in social tagging concept.

However, the authors’ reference of semiotic dynamic is the work of Ke et.al (2002) who adopts the Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) school of semiotics which takes a sign being constructed within a dual relation (signifier, signified). Since these two semiotic schools have been in debates for decades, the authors adopting these two papers as their definition for semiotic dynamic may lead to confusion in general.

Picture 1: Steels and Kaplan (1999)'s Semiotic Dynamic

Secondly, their proposal for the tag-centric calculation method contradicts their own arguments favoring semantic context. In such context, semantic meaning is supossed to deal with the same Object (the same resource / bookmark in this research) to investigate the relation between different users and users' tags on their co-occurrence. Picture 1 shows the original method for the co-occurrence of items for their semantic meaning in Steels and Kaplan (1999) ‘s semiotic dynamic which the authors have cited from. Picture 2 shows the authors' method for calculating the co-occurrence of tags. Different objects (resources /bookmarks refering to) and different users(interpreters) are ignored in this case. The main focus is on the different tags’ relations, namely frequency and co-occurrence especially in low-high rank tags. Note that our review is not to argue that the authors’ work cannot result in user’s activity patterns since the Power Law and Zipf’s law have been well-proved in such domain. To be specific, if the authors’ work is not in the semiotic dynamic domain, the contradiction may not be this tremendous.



Picture 2: the authors' semiotic dynamic?

ArticleRead (3): A Definition of Information

A Definition of Information , By A.D. Madden, Aslib Proceedings vol. 52, No.9, p.343-, 2000.10.

In his article A.D. Madden has drawn some attention to the interpretation of information in the aspect of context.

After reviewing literatures defining information: as a representation of knowledge; as data in the environment; as part of the communication process; as a resource or commodity, the author has an attempt to further defining “information” in a perspective of “informing contexts”.

Three major elements in his Information-in-Context Model are defined as: “authorial context” which is a message being originated, “readership context” which is a message being received and interpreted, as well as “the message” which is the information being transmitted.

The idea of taking information reception and interpretation within personal and community paradigms in social-cultural contexts is valuable for most understating of the definition of information. However, the author rephrases the definition of information for the context-reliant model of information reception in the conclusion without clear explanation about “stimulus”, “system” and “system relationship” . The rephrases of the definition makes the information more blur in the end.

The general idea of Madden’s definition of information can be summarized as the figure shown.

Note: This review was mainly completed as a homework while taking the Humanity Informatics Class lectured by Professor Ching-Chun Hsieh in December 2006.