Citation:
J.F. Pane and B.A. Myers, "Tabular and Textual Methods for Selecting Objects
from a Group," Proceedings of VL 2000: IEEE International Symposium on
Visual Languages, Seattle, WA: IEEE Computer Society, September
10-13 2000, pp. 157-164.
Abstract:
The accurate formulation of boolean expressions is a notorious problem
in programming languages and database query tools. This paper studies
the ways that untrained users naturally express and interpret queries,
revealing some of the underlying reasons why this task is so difficult.
Among the study's findings are: people interpret the word AND to mean
either conjunction or disjunction depending on context, the scope to
which they attribute the word NOT depends on whether the subsequent
operator is AND or OR, and they often ignore parenthesis. Therefore,
relying on these words and symbols for query formulation will result in
poor usability. A tabular query form is proposed that avoids the need to
name the operators, provides a clear distinction between conjunction and
disjunction, and makes grouping more explicit. Comparing the tabular
language with textual boolean expressions, the study finds that
untrained users perform better when they express their queries in the
tabular language, and about equally well when interpreting queries
written in either language. We conclude that systems may benefit by
adopting a tabular notation for query formulation.
Full text of this paper:
PaneMyersTabularTextual.pdf (2.15 MB).
Related short paper on this topic:
J.F. Pane and B.A. Myers,
Improving User Performance on Boolean Queries,
CHI 2000 Extended Abstracts: Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, G. Szwillus and T. Turner, Eds. The Hague, Netherlands: ACM Press,
April 1-6, 2000, pp. 269-270.
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