project goal

According to usability experts, the top user issue for Web sites is difficult navigation. We have been developing automated usability tools for several years, and here we describe a prototype service called InfoScent™ Bloodhound Simulator, a push-button navigation analysis system, which automatically analyzes the information cues on a Web site to produce a usability report.

There currently exists a major gulf between HCI theories and how they can be applied to the design of Web information architecture. As a scientific field, HCI has almost been sideswiped by the Web, because very few existing HCI theories seem to point the direction for designers to follow. Instead, rules of thumb have been developed from experiences of usability gurus and consultants. Years of development in HCI theory seem not to have prepared us for an answer to how Web sites should be designed. Indeed, designers and researchers of Web interactions have been seeking ways to quantify the quality of user experience for the last five or six years. The lack of applied theory has resulted in the development of ad-hoc methods for designing Web site navigation and content structure. How can we advance the state of art in HCI theory and apply it so that it is more relevant and directly applicable to Web designers?

Recently, we have discovered several surprises in the fundamental theories of how people access information. For example, the “Law of Surfing” shows that users display different but regular patterns of surfing. The equation from this law predicts the limits of how far people will click on sites. Information Foraging Theory predicts the information gathering behavior of users in an information environment . From these user models of how people access and understand information, researchers have discovered that we can predict and simulate how users surf sites with specific tasks, such as how patients access their personal medical records and seek answers to their medical questions.

One of these models is based on the notion of “Information Scent,” which is the user’s perception of the value and the cost of accessing a particular piece of information. The idea is that the user decides whether the distal information that lies on the other side of a link is worthwhile to explore and assimilate based on the proximal cues that surround the hyperlink. The theory posits that users decide on their particular courses of action based on these cues, and their behavioral patterns are guided by information scent. One open research question is whether these models can be used directly by practitioners to measure something about the user interaction in their site testing.

To be sure, Information Scent as a concept has been directly utilized in the field to help the design of sites by enabling designers to think about what proximal cues might lead directly to user action. Published research thus far has described the model and how it might be applied as an automated simulation system. The attractiveness of this approach is that Web sites can be measured without employing usage logs, enabling alternative designs of the site to be tested simultaneously. However, what is missing is a method to utilize the model directly, and to embed this method in a system that practitioners can use effortlessly.

In this project, we illustrate the development of a system that directly utilizes Information Scent to help designers. We describe our development of this prototype service that enables us to simulate the behavior of users with specific information goals. This service is called the InfoScent™ Bloodhound Simulator. Finally, we present a large user study involving 244 users and some 1385 user sessions over 4 sites and 32 tasks. The user study shows how Bloodhound correlates with real users surfing for information.

 The Bloodhound Project: Automating Discovery of Web Usability Issues using the InfoScent™  Simulator. Ed H. Chi, Adam Rosien, Gesara Suppattanasiri, Amanda Williams, Christiaan Royer, Celia Chow, Erica Robles,  Brinda Dalal, Julie Chen, Steve Cousins. In Proc. of ACM CHI 2003 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp.  --. ACM Press, April 2003. Fort Lauderdale, FL.

 Using Information Scent to Model User Information Needs and Actions on the Web. Ed H. Chi, Peter  Pirolli, Kim Chen, James Pitkow. In Proc. of ACM CHI 2001 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 490-- 497. ACM Press, April 2001. Seattle, WA.

 The Scent of a Site: A System for Analyzing and Predicting Information Scent, Usage, and  Usability of a Web Site. Ed H. Chi, Peter Pirolli, James Pitkow. In Proc. of ACM CHI 2000 Conference on Human  Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 161--168, 581, 582. ACM Press, 2000. Amsterdam, Netherlands.

                                                                                                        more publications

                                                      bloodhound in the news

Search tool aids browsing, Technology Research News, March 10, 2004

PARC Research on Information Scent, PC Magazine, July 1, 2003

Book Review: Human Factors and Web Development, 2nd Ed., Webreference.com, Dec. 5, 2002

Building a Better Automotive Web Site, Forrester Report, Nov. 2002

Understanding user interaction, key to improving Web info retrieval, Fall COMDEX 2002 Magazine

Conference Report: Usability and Web Site Success, Computerworld, Nov. 7, 2002

Digital Bloodhounds: Web Users Follow the 'Information Scent', Computerworld, June, 17, 2002

Web Sites that Work, Information Week, Aug. 27, 2001

Hot on the Scent of Information, Wired News, June 8, 2001

Keep the (Online) Customer Satisfied, Information Week, May 21, 2001

Researchers Try to Make "Scents" Out of Tangled Web, San Francisco Gate, May 14, 2001

Scents and Sensibility, The Economist, April 26, 2001

Xerox Project Studies Ways People Use Web, Investor Business Daily, March 16, 2001

  
  LumberJack
  ScentTrails
  Information Scent
  IUNIS
  WUFIS
  Webology

  Ed H. Chi, Adam Rosien, Gesara Suppattanasiri, Amanda Williams, Christiaan Royer, Celia Chow,   Erica Robles, Brinda Dalal, Julie Chen, Steve Cousins.

 
 Bloodhound is available for licensing. Please contact: