skip to main content
10.5555/1839214.1839218guideproceedingsArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesgiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article
Free access

Characterizing large-scale use of a direct manipulation application in the wild

Published: 31 May 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Examining large-scale, long-term application use is critical to understanding how an application meets the needs of its user community. However, there have been few published analyses of long-term use of desktop applications, and none that have examined applications that support creating and modifying content using direct manipulation. In this paper, we present an analysis of 2 years of usage data from an instrumented version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program, including data from over 200 users. In the course of our analysis, we show that previous findings concerning the sparseness of command use and idiosyncrasy of users' command vocabularies extend to a new domain and interaction style. These findings motivate continued research in adaptive and mixed-initiative interfaces. We also describe the novel application of a clustering technique to characterize a user community's higher-level tasks from low-level logging data.

References

[1]
Bunt, A., Conati, C., and McGrenere, J. Supporting interface customization using a mixed-initiative approach. Proc. of IUI 2007, ACM (2007), pages 92--101.
[2]
Cockburn, A., Gutwin, C., and Greenberg, S. A predictive model of menu performance. Proc. of CHI 2007, ACM (2007), pages 627--636.
[3]
Cook, R., Kay, J., Ryan, G., and Thomas, R. C. A toolkit for appraising the long term usability of a text editor. Software Quality Journal 4, 2 (1995), pages 131--154.
[4]
Draper, S. W. The Nature of Expertise in UNIX. Proc. of INTERACT '84, Elsevier North-Holland (1984), pages 465--471.
[5]
Ducheneaut, N. and Moore, R. J. The social side of gaming: a study of interaction patterns in a massively multiplayer online game. Proc. of CSCW 2004, (2004), pages 360--369.
[6]
Greenberg, S. The computer user as toolsmith: the use, reuse, and organization of computer-based tools. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, USA, 1993.
[7]
Hanson, S. J., Kraut, R. E., and Farber, J. M. Interface design and multivariate analysis of UNIX command use. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 2, 1 (1984), pages 42--57.
[8]
Heer, J. and Chi, E. H. Separating the swarm: categorization methods for user sessions on the web. Proceedings of CHI 2002, ACM (2002), pages 243--250.
[9]
Hilbert and Redmiles. Extracting usability information from user interface events. ACM Comp. Surveys 32, 4 (2000), pages 384--421.
[10]
Kay, J. and Thomas, R. C. Studying long-term system use. Communications of the ACM 38, 7 (1995), pages 61--69.
[11]
Kosala, R. and Blockeel, H. Web mining research: a survey. SIGKDD Explor. Newsl. 2, 1 (2000), pages 1--15.
[12]
Linton, Joy, and Schaefer. Building user and expert models by long-term observation of application usage. Proc. of UM 1999, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. (1999), pages 129--138.
[13]
McGrenere, J. and Moore, G. Are we all in the same "bloat"? Proc. of GI 2000, (2000), pages 187--196.
[14]
Murphy, G. C., Kersten, M., and Findlater, L. How Are Java Software Developers Using the Eclipse IDE? IEEE Software 23, 4 (2006), pages 76--83.
[15]
Norman, K. L. The Psychology of Menu Selection: Designing Cognitive Control at the Human/Computer Interface. Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., Westport, CT, USA, 1991.
[16]
Obendorf, H., Weinreich, H., Herder, E., and Mayer, M. Web page visitation revisited: implications of a long-term click-stream study of browser usage. Proc. of CHI 2007, (2007), pages 597--606.
[17]
Sutcliffe and Old. Do users know they have user models? Some experiences in the practice of user modelling. Proc. of INTERACT '87, Elsevier North-Holland (1987), pages 35--41.
[18]
Terry, M., Kay, M., Van Vugt, B., Slack, O., and Park, T. ingimp: introducing instrumentation to an end-user open source application. Proc. of CHI 2008, ACM (2008), pages 607--616.
[19]
Terry, M. and Mynatt, E. D. Recognizing Creative Needs in User Interface Design. Proc. of the Fourth Conference on Creativity & Cognition, ACM Press (2002), pages 38--44.
[20]
Whissell, J. S., Clarke, C. L. A., and Ashkan, A. Clustering web queries. Proc. of CIKM 2009, (2009).
[21]
Whiteside, J., Archer, N., Wixon, D., and Good, M. How do people really use text editors? ACM SIGOA Newsletter 3, 1--2 (1982), pages 29--40.

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)From Discovery to Adoption: Understanding the ML Practitioners’ Interpretability JourneyProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3596046(2304-2325)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
  • (2018)Characterizing Search Behavior in Productivity SoftwareProceedings of the 2018 Conference on Human Information Interaction & Retrieval10.1145/3176349.3176395(160-169)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2018
  • (2017)Investigating the Post-Training Persistence of Expert Interaction TechniquesACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/311992824:4(1-46)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2017
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Characterizing large-scale use of a direct manipulation application in the wild

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image Guide Proceedings
    GI '10: Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2010
    May 2010
    291 pages
    ISBN:9781568817125
    • Program Chairs:
    • David Mould,
    • Sylvie Noël

    Publisher

    Canadian Information Processing Society

    Canada

    Publication History

    Published: 31 May 2010

    Author Tags

    1. adaptive interfaces
    2. community command usage
    3. logging
    4. long-term usage
    5. longitudinal study
    6. open source software
    7. remote usability

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Acceptance Rates

    GI '10 Paper Acceptance Rate 35 of 88 submissions, 40%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 206 of 508 submissions, 41%

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)36
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)11
    Reflects downloads up to 30 Jan 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2023)From Discovery to Adoption: Understanding the ML Practitioners’ Interpretability JourneyProceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3563657.3596046(2304-2325)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2023
    • (2018)Characterizing Search Behavior in Productivity SoftwareProceedings of the 2018 Conference on Human Information Interaction & Retrieval10.1145/3176349.3176395(160-169)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2018
    • (2017)Investigating the Post-Training Persistence of Expert Interaction TechniquesACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/311992824:4(1-46)Online publication date: 23-Aug-2017
    • (2017)GUI Design for IDE Command RecommendationsProceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3025171.3025200(595-599)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2017
    • (2016)Exploring User Attitudes Towards Different Approaches to Command Recommendation in Feature-Rich SoftwareProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/2856767.2856814(43-47)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2016
    • (2016)Data-driven adaptive history for image editingProceedings of the 20th ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games10.1145/2856400.2856417(103-111)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2016
    • (2015)Exploring Personalized Command Recommendations based on Information Found in Web DocumentationProceedings of the 20th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/2678025.2701387(225-235)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2015
    • (2014)Task-centric interfaces for feature-rich softwareProceedings of the 26th Australian Computer-Human Interaction Conference on Designing Futures: the Future of Design10.1145/2686612.2686620(49-58)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2014
    • (2014)Adaptive click-and-crossProceedings of the 19th international conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/2557500.2557511(299-304)Online publication date: 24-Feb-2014
    • (2014)Investigating the feasibility of extracting tool demonstrations from in-situ video contentProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/2556288.2557142(4007-4016)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2014
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Login options

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media