Browsing Large HTML Tables on Small Screens

Source:
"Browsing Large HTML Tables on Small Screens." by Keishi Tajima and Kaori Ohnishi. UIST 2008

Figure 1: Normal Mode w/ collapsible headers

Figure 2: Record Mode

Figure 3: Cell Mode

In the paper "Browsing Large HTML Tables on Small Screens" by Keishi Tajima and Kaori Ohnishi. Their goal is to try to solve the problems of viewing large tables of data on a PDA or a cellphone. First, they start off by narrowing down the types of tables that people would normally go on while they're using a portable device. Next, they went into a discussion of how to interpret the data in the table, such as using the relational approach or the matrix approach. Then, they talked about the different modes that they try to implement. Normal mode is well, normal. They allow the user to fold unnecessary columns or rows to view only the ones they want. Also, they can show a balloon with the headers of the rows and columns so the user can know what the data represents. If the user clicks on a row (column) header, then the table will show the cell contents and its corresponding column (row) header. In cell mode, it will show the same thing, but it would include the header that you clicked on at the top, and this time, the user will always see that header. The style of folding has a problem because it needs to know which row and column are headers. Composite cells can be a problem if they represent an aggregate of two categories. They devised many rules to determine whether logical substructures and whether the cell is part of the header. They did experiements on whether or not their rules would work. They used a group of 80 tables, and it didn't work for all of them, showing that more work needs to be done. Some rules caused more errors than others.

I believe that this is important for portable devices. It would be more convenient for the people to be able to access data on the run. While it is possible to shrink the table down so you can see it, reading it would be difficult. The normal and cell modes were use to use and understand. Of course, finding out the headers is the difficult part and would need more work in the future. If I had more knowledge of databases, since they use some database terminology in the paper, I might have been able to understand this paper more and come up with better ideas on how to solve some issues.

Mole People, Mole People.. taste like moles... talks like people... Mole People

Comments
I have commented on the following blogs:
Sarah Gray
George Lucchese
Eric Scott

The Mole People
I have read the book the Mole People by Jennifer Toth. This was not a clear cut ethnography, but there are some similarities. The book starts out by generally telling how the author first learn about the mole people and how the study got started. The remaining chapters continually tells the story of the people under the subways, but it did not seem to have a main connecting timeline. Only in a few chapters does the author refers to a past event. Futhermore, it seems that the chapters were stories of their own. They talk about different groups in the subways and tell what happens when she was with them. Some of the stories were second hand stories passed down from the different camps.

Overall, this was generally a good book. Of course, I have my doubts about some of the stories. Like when she encountered that gang, and the book had the other people's words quoted. I think she might have made some of the quotes up and just extrapolated what might have been said through her knowledge of the personality. I don't think she mentioned anything about how she recorded the speech, so she might had to make some things up when she thought about it later. Also, sometimes, she could've did a better job of reminding the reader of who was who, because after a while, everyone's names started to blend together.

So for cliffnotes, this book was ok.. but one of my main criticism of this book was that I don't know how she got some of those longer quotes, unless she was recording them.

Forum Trolling from the TNZ: Abandom all hope, ye who enters here

I worked on an ethnography with Sarah Gray. We had a choice between two forums, The Neutral Zone from a Star Trek message board, or the general board from TexAgs. After choosing The Neutral Zone (TNZ), we decided on what kinds of data to collect. We chose the top 5 non-tagged threads, and we took data on the number of posts, the number of off-topic posts, the type of thread, the political leanings of the original post, and the first off topic post in that thread. We did two checkpoints. We had some assumptions going into the study, and it turns out 2 out of 3 were incorrect:

1. The majority of the political threads were neutral in nature, at least the original post was. Of the 7 political threads we saw, only 2 had a liberal leaning OP. (incorrect original assumption)
   
2. Once a thread got off topic, we found that the discussion usually went back on topic. We believe this is because of users reading the original post and replying to that instead of reading the entire thread. (incorrect original assumption)
3. Original posts with a more partisan feel will get more off topic posts and these off topic posts will appear ealier. Of the 2 liberal threads we saw, both were quite accusatory in nature, and the third post in each of those threads went off topic.

I believe that as a team, we negated individual weaknesses. I am an insider to the forums, and I understand the "psyche" of the posters. I also have access to the board in the first place. However, I tend to become too involved in the threads and will let many posts go as on topic, if there is a judgement call. Sarah, on the other hand, does not even know about this forum until I mentioned it to her. She was an outsider providing an objective view of the forum and the posts. I defered to her judgement on the borderline posts, since she had a more definitive definition for off topic.

Does Media = Real Life?

I have commented on the following blogs
Lei Gu
Eric Scott
Sarah Gray


The authors of the book argued that even though we know that media is not real and doesn't have feelings, we still treat it like it was a real person. They started their research by going through the social science section of the libraries and looked at different studies about human-human interaction in the areas of mannerisms, personality, emotions, social roles, and form. They looked at the result of the studies and replaced the second human with the word computer or media. Then they performed experiments to determine if the new hypothesis was valid for human-computer interaction. For the most part, their arguments were validated.

As I starting reading, I noticed that they did not do a real good job of justifying the results. The experiments seemed to confirm everything they said, and any criticisms of the methods were brushed aside with ease. I did not do further research into the details of the experiments and maybe doing so would clear up my concerns, but as it stands now, I am not completely convinced the results validated the hypothesis.

The main point of the book was that we would treat a computer like a human being, even though we know it isn't. I guess this could be true to an extent, since I think a running joke is that I treat my macbook like I would treat my child (which is a scary thought considering the condition of the laptop before I had it repaired... 4 times). They also said that computers should be nice to the users and respond positively to the user at certain times, like a complimenting spell check. That might be useful to certain people, but to me, if my macbook ever did that, I would feel like strangling it. I prefer usuability and efficiency, not niceness.

I personally think that this book is decent. It is not as good as the previous one, The Design of Everyday Things, but it does have valid points here and there, but, as I mentioned, the authors could've done a better job of justifying the results and why criticisms do not apply, and sometimes, the authors go too far when saying that computers should act like a nice human being.