Skip to main content

iSchool Team wins Best Paper Award at ECIR



How can we more systematically assess whether an information retrieval system (e.g., a search engine), delivers an engaging user experience?  This is the question that has initiated a research project among PhD student, Mengdie Zhuang and her supervisors, Professor Elaine Toms, and Dr. Gianluca Demartini.



To date, search systems are evaluated using a range of isolated measures and metrics, mostly drawn from computer logfiles that contain keystrokes and mouse clicks. Some systems are assessed at the end of using the system with a questionnaire or interview.  When the system delivers a negative user experience, the system has no time to rectify its actions when the evaluation occurs at the end of using the system. This research team is looking at how one might examine the patterns of those actions so as to predict whether the user is likely to express a positive or negative assessment, combining both types of evaluations used to date.  The potential impact of this research is to shorten and simplify the evaluation process.



The first output from this research can be found in,  “The Relationship Between User Perception and User Behaviour in Interactive Information Retrieval Evaluation” which won Best Paper Award at the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) which took place in Padova, Italy, March 20-23, 2016.  ECIR, in its 38th year, is the premier European conference that deals with new research in information retrieval.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Raspberry Pi Weather Project now live

A project to create a raspberry pi weather station is currently live in the Information School.  The Sheffield Pi weather station has been created by Romilly Close, undergraduate Aerospace Engineering student at the University of Sheffield.  The project was funded by the Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) scheme and is being supervised by Dr Jo Bates, Paula Goodale and Fred Sonnenwald from the Information School. Information about the Sheffield Pi station and how to create your own can be found on the project website .  You can also see live data from the Sheffield Pi station on Plot.ly , and further information can also be found on the Met Office Weather Observations Website .    This work compliments the School’s existing project entitled ‘The Secret Life of a Weather Datum’ which explores socio-cultural influences on weather data.  This project is funded under the AHRC’s Digital Transformations Big Data call.  It aims to pilot a new approach to im

Our Chemoinformatics Group wins Jason Farradane Award

The Information School's Chemoinformatics Research Group has been awarded the 2012 UKeiG Jason Farradane Award , in recognition of its outstanding 40 year contribution to the information field. The prize is awarded to the three current members of the group,  Professor Val Gillet , Dr John Holliday and Professor Peter Willett . The judges recognised the Group's status as one of the world's leading centres of chemoinformatics research, a major contributor to the field of information science, and an exemplar in raising the profile of the information profession. The School has a long association with the Farradane prize. Its second recipient was long time member of staff Professor Mike Lynch in 1980.

Reflections on LILAC 2023

Current student Yuki attended the LILAC Conference - the Information Literacy Conference - in April and shares her thoughts below! I attended LILAC this year as a MA Librarianship student at the Information School. Attending the conference was an incredible opportunity to meet other library professionals from across the world and learn about information literacy from a variety of perspectives.