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A proactive recommendation system for writing: helping without disrupting

Published: 28 August 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Motivation -- Finding appropriate information while writing a scientific paper is essential, but also difficult and time consuming. A Proactive Recommender System (PRS) retrieves information relevant to the text being written, and presents it automatically. However, current PRSs overlook that writing is a demanding task, affected by interruptions. We look for those moments during writing where finding information is important and where proactive presentation interrupts least.
Our goal is to develop a PRS for professional writers that presents information non-intrusively and timely so as to minimize disturbing the writing process.
Research approach -- Finding information is most needed during Reviewing and Planning. In two experiments we explore the effects of a PRS during these phases.
Findings -- PRSs speed up writing and improve the quality of the text compared to situations where writers have to look for information actively.
Originality/Value -- Our research will change the design of PRSs and enhance our understanding of complex cognitive tasks such as writing and how electronic information processing tools affect them.
Take away message -- We can turn interruptions in complex cognitive tasks into an advantage in terms of time and the quality, provided that the interruption comes at the right time and the information offered is relevant and accurate. Future research should focus on precisely this: when are interrupts least disturbing and how to make PRSs more accurate and relevant.

References

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Berninger, V., Whitaker, D. Yuen Feng, Swanson, H. L. & Abbott R. D. (1996). Assessment of planning, translating, and revising in junior high writers. Journal of School Psychology, 23--52.
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Budzik, J. and Hammond, K. (1999). Watson: Anticipating and Contextualizing Information Needs. Proc. 62nd Ann. Meeting Am. Soc. for Information Science, 727--740.
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Dansac, C. and Alamargot, D. (1999). Accessing referential information during text composition: when and why? In M. Torrance and D. Galbraith (Eds.). Knowing what to write: Conceptual processes in text production, pp.76--97. Amsterdam University Press.
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Deshpande, A., Boves, L. and Puerta Melguizo, M. C. (2006). À propos: Pro-active personalization for professional document writing. SigWriting, 10th International Conference of the EARLI Special Interest Group on writing. September, 2006. Antwerp, Belgium.
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  1. A proactive recommendation system for writing: helping without disrupting

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ECCE '07: Proceedings of the 14th European conference on Cognitive ergonomics: invent! explore!
    August 2007
    334 pages
    ISBN:9781847998491
    DOI:10.1145/1362550
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    • The British Computer Society
    • ACM: Association for Computing Machinery
    • SIGCHI: Specialist Interest Group in Computer-Human Interaction of the ACM
    • Interactions, the Human-Computer Interaction Specialist Group of the BCS
    • Middlesex University, London, School of Computing Science
    • European Office of Aerospace Research and Development, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, United States Air Force Research Laboratory
    • EACE: European Association of Cognitive Ergonomics
    • Brunel University, West London, Department of Information Systems and Computing

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 28 August 2007

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    Author Tags

    1. editing
    2. information seeking
    3. interruptions
    4. planning
    5. proactive recommender system
    6. writing stages

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    ECCE07
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    ECCE07: European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics 2007
    August 28 - 31, 2007
    London, United Kingdom

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    Overall Acceptance Rate 56 of 91 submissions, 62%

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)A novel framework for an intelligent deep learning based product recommendation system using sentiment analysis (SA)Automatika10.1080/00051144.2023.229514865:2(410-424)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2024
    • (2014)The Reason Why: A Survey of Explanations for Recommender SystemsAdaptive Multimedia Retrieval: Semantics, Context, and Adaptation10.1007/978-3-319-12093-5_3(67-84)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2014
    • (2010)Introduction to Recommender Systems HandbookRecommender Systems Handbook10.1007/978-0-387-85820-3_1(1-35)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2010
    • (2008)Optimal access to information while writingProceedings of the second international symposium on Information interaction in context10.1145/1414694.1414726(139-144)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2008

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