June 2000 Chapter Meeting
presents
Free and open to all who wish to attend, but membership is only $10/year.
Designers and researchers of usersí interactions with the World Wide Web need tools that permit the rapid exploration of hypotheses about complex interactions of user goals, user behaviors, and Web site designs. In order to do so, one needs an architecture and system for the analysis and prediction of user behavior and Web site usability. In this talk, I will review some of the initial attempts to visualize Web interactions, followed by a more detailed description of a system that integrates research on human information foraging theory, a reference model of information visualization and Web data-mining techniques. The system also incorporates new methods of Web site visualization (Dome Tree, Usage Based Layouts), a new predictive modeling technique for Web site use (Web User Flow by Information Scent, WUFIS), and new Web usability metrics. (WAP).
Jim Pitkow is currently President of GroupFire - a very recent spin-out from Xerox PARC.
Prior to joining GroupFire, Jim was a research scientist at Xerox PARC and Chair of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Characterization Activity. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1997 (BS Psychology Univ. of Colorado 93). While at Georgia Tech's GVU Center, Jim pioneered the field of online surveying by creating Graphics Visualization and Usability Center (GVU)'s WWW User Surveys. The survey research remains the most requested research at Georgia Tech and has been written up in hundreds of articles by the press. He has published extensively, filled over two dozen patents, testified as an expert witness before the Federal Trade Commision and presented material to the United Nations. Jim serves as an Advisor and a Technical Advisor to several Internet companies. Outside of work, Jim is a member of the National Ski Patrol, an accomplished mountaineer, and is often found climbing rock and ice. Note: *GroupFire is a very recent spin-out from Xerox PARC