Paper Info
Title
A comparative evaluation of multiple chat stream interfaces for information-intensive environments
Abstract
For information workers who monitor numerous constantly updating data streams, conserving cognitive resources is crucial. This study evaluated how an interface affects information workers' ability to grasp critical information from multiple text-based chat streams under time pressure. We designed and built a working prototype that displays ten chat streams simultaneously in standard chat windows (ST) and ticker tapes (TT). We conducted a lab experiment to evaluate differences in how these two interfaces support signal and context detection. We found that with ST, participants detected significantly more target words (SAT words) with rarer frequency and significantly more context information (disaster facts) than with TT. Our results show that while TT is potentially better for overview scanning of multiple streams, ST is likely to be better for multi-tasking. Our study informs the design of future multi-chat systems so that large amounts of information can be easier to detect and process.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1145/2470654.2481375
CHI
Keywords
Field
DocType
information-intensive environment,sat word,information worker,context information,multiple stream,chat stream,context detection,comparative evaluation,cognitive resource,critical information,multiple chat stream interface,multiple text-based chat stream,standard chat windows,empirical study
Cognitive resource theory,Data stream mining,GRASP,Computer science,Human–computer interaction,Multimedia,Empirical research
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
3
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yiran Wang1627.68
Andy Echenique2283.66
Martin Shelton3162.55
Gloria Mark42006178.23