1. Project Team
2. Overview
3. Task Analysis - Users and Tasks / Interviews / Scenarios
4. Suggested Solution - Functionality / Interface
5. Experiment
6. Appendix

1. Project Team

Masako Sho - group manager
Mohammed Shamma - documentation manager 
Hans Christian von Krogh - evaluation manager
Petter Johnstad - design manager

2. Overview

3. Task Analysis

Novice users: create bookmarks and organize them using folders occasionally, the number of bookmarks is not large, do not actively use history functions, prefer intuitive operations using icons and wizards 
Expert users: use bookmarks and history functions to create archives of their own, the number of bookmarks as well as visited sites is large, prefer short cut keys and customized settings

• Creating bookmarks
• Organizing bookmarks and history
• Finding a particular site

The following table shows detailed tasks in each category and type of users who perform the task.  is a tasks performed by novice users and  denotes a task performed by expert users.

n	e	task
Creating bookmarks
		add current page to bookmarks
		add a bookmark by specifying its URL
		specify name of a bookmark
		edit property of a bookmark (name, description etc.)
Organizing bookmarks and history
		create folders
		delete folders and bookmarks
		open and close folder
		move folder contents
		move folders
		edit property of folders (name, description etc.)
		set folder attributes (color, icon, icon size etc.)
		customize view (list, tree, text only etc.)
		update bookmarks (find broken links)
Finding a particular site
		browse bookmarks and history
		search bookmarks and history by name, URL, date etc.
		save search results
		open a particular site in browser

Interview Questions 
We have asked the following questions to potential users.  Interviewees are:

A.-has experience in using bookmarks
-doesn't know the extistence of history function
-uses browser almost everyday

B.-has experience using bookmarks and history
-uses browser everyday

C.-has limited experience using bookmarks and history
-uses a browser frequently
-finds the history and bookmark functions cumbersome

Q1. Do you want the system to automatically generate or recommend a bookmark for the site you visit frequently? A. No B. That would be nice, yes. C. I guess that would be okay. I don't know if I would use them though.

Q2. What kind of information do you want to keep with URL of a bookmarked site - name, title, keyword, date of creation, frequency of visit? Do you want to edit these properties at the time of creation or prefer to do so later? A. Want to change the name of the site when title is not descriptive enough. B. I would like to be prompted there is no title for the bookmark. C. It would be nice to have a name instead of the address. Often, a URL doesn't tell you very much.

Q3. Do you want to view the bookmarks and history files in tree structured list? Or as a list of links in a browser? A. Have no idea about history. B. Anything better than what Netscape uses now would be good. C. I haven't found the history function very useful so far. A tree sounds nice.

Q4. Do you use folders to organize your bookmarks? A. No. Don't know how to make one. Want to do so with drag and drop. B. Yes. C. I didn't know you could. Anyway, I have very few bookmarks.

Q5. Do you ever find any difficulty in moving bookmarks and folders using the mouse? A. Have no experience to do so on Netscape or IE. B. Yes, it's often confusin what folder I'm placing the bookmark in. C. Don't know how to do it.

Q6. How do you prefer to arrange your bookmarks - by alphabetical order, by date of creation, arbitrary or any other way? A. By category. B. I would like for them to be sorted by visit frequency. C. I'd like to be able to sort them myself.

Q7. Do you generally find the bookmark or history file that you are searching for? A. Since not using the folders now, it's not easy to find one when the nubmer of bookmarks gets large. B. I always keep my bookmarks at a low number, but as for my history files, I often give up when I'm having trouble finding something. C. I often find it faster to write the URL than to use the bookmarks. I've never found what I've been looking for in the history file.

Q8. Do you know you can search bookmarks or history files?  Have you ever used the search function? A. No. B. No. C. No.

Q9. What field do you normally search on or want to search on - name, title, description, date, URL? A. By category. If possible to organize bookmarks with folders by category, do not need special search function. B. If I were to search these files I would probably like to search by URL. C. I don't search my bookmarks. When I've tried searching the history file, I've searched by date.

Based on the answers from the interview questions we have assumed the following:

Q1. Answers varied. Hard to determine if the feature will be useful.
Q2. It is clear that users find the current information provided to be hard to use and that a solution providing some type of basic differentiation (i.e. non-technical, simple names) of bookmarks would work better.
Q3. It seems that users who have used the history viewer in Netscape find it hard to use.
Q4. Two of the three users did not use folders at all.
Q5. Answers varied. But the only users who had experience found that dragging and dropping folders was not easy.
Q6. Users would definitely like to sort bookmarks.
Q7. History files are hard to search through.
Q8. No one had used the search bookmarks or history functions.
Q9. Category, URL and date are common fields for searching bookmarks.

Scenarios 
Based on the interviews and our own experiences in using bookmark and history functions with existing interfaces, the following three scenarios are created.   

A. Using Folders to Organize Bookmarks 

Judy bought her fist home computer a month ago.  She has been accessing the Internet almost everyday since then and saved several sites she often visits as bookmarks.  While the number of the bookmarked sites was small, she could easily find a particular site she wanted to revisit from a list of bookmarks.  However, as the number grows, it becomes difficult to find the one she needs.  So, she decides to organize the bookmarks using folders.  When she clicks on an icon in the menu bar to create a new folder,  a dialog box comes up and asks her to type in the name of the folder.  The new "Job Search" folder appears on the display and Judy moves icons of bookmarks to the folder using mouse.  While doing this, she finds that there is a nice career site she visited yesterday but forgot to bookmark. She opens yesterday's history folder and finds the site by browsing titles in the history.  She moves the icon of the site to the "Job Search" folder in the same way. 

David, an Internet user, often gets carried away when surfing the web. He constantly forgets to bookmark the interesting web sites he finds, and can hardly ever find the sites he visit more  than once. To make it easier to revisit the sites he finds useful, he decides to use an automatic bookmarking function. He creates a folder and sets it to  automatically create bookmarks. He specifies the folder to add bookmarks for all web pages visited more than 5 times or viewed for more than 5 minutes. He also chooses to automatically bookmark servers where he has accessed more than 10 documents. Later, he'll organize the automatically collected bookmarks in appropriate folders according to their contents.

Naomi is looking for a specific page that she visited, but does not remember when, what, or where (URL) it is.  She decides to use the history record viewer, but realizes that the current mode of viewing the record in a flat text format is too cumbersome. Naomi then decides to click on the toggle switch on their menu bar that changes the mode of viewing from flat text to graphical.  She is presented with a screen that shows a set of documents viewed as large icons and that are organized in vertical tree structures.  She remembers that she visited the page from a search engine and therefore selects that site as the primary "parent" page.  The view then changes to display all pages that were downloaded as links from the parent page.  She then sorts through these pages and discovers the site that she had once viewed and then bookmarks it. If Naomi remembers a part of page title or URL, she does not need to browse the history list.  She can open a search window and type in what she remembers.  Not only the history file but also the bookmarks are searched at once.  Naomi is presented with a list of related sites she has visited and finds the site she wants.

4. Suggested Solution

Interface Sketches  
The sketches show how a user can perform various tasks using new interface.  Click thumbnails to view bigger images of sketches. 
 

1. Main window - bookmark
	Menu bar comes at the top of the window.  Icons are provided for frequently used commands and placed in the tool bar.  Standard close box is at the right upper corner and Help button "?" is available in any window or dialog boxes at the same corner.    The contents of the selected folder are displayed on the right side of the window.  "B" on the icon means Bookmark.
2. Main window - history
	The same window as the previous one.  It now displays contents of a history folder. A user can seamlessly move between bookmark and history folders.  "H" represents a History file.
3. View/edit properties
	Properties of each bookmark, history file and folder can be viewed and editedin dialog box.  Name, URL, description (keywords) and color of icon are editable.  The dialog box pops up when bookmark, hisotry or folder is selected and property icon is selected.
4. Create folder
	A new folder is created by clicking an icon.  A dialog box comesup when the icon is clicked and a user can type in name of the folder, color and any description.  (This is the same dialog box as the property dialog for a folder.)  If sites are selected before the "New Folder" icon is clicked, they are stored int he new folder.
5. Move folder contents
	A user can "drag and drop" selected site(s) to any bookmark folder using mouse.  In this sketch, a site in a history folder is moved to a bookmark folder.
6. Set advanced options
	Various options can be set on dialog boxes.  Representation (icon) of the sites can be changed by user preference.  A user can assign meanings to colors and use them to categorize folders and bookmarks.  S/he can also set options such as automatic bookmark in the preferences window.
7. Change view
	View of the main window can be changed by clicking "Change View" icon.  Several different views are available.  In spite of the change in the view, menu bar and icons stay the same.
8. Search
	A user is able to search the whole archive, i.e. bookmarks and history, at a time.  Search icon brings up a dialog box where a user can specify search keys such as name, description, domain of the site and the date last visited.   Search result is stored in the special folder and its contents are displayed in the right frame.  (This view can change when different view is selected by a user.) A user can perform similar operations such as move and edit property to these result sites.

The sequence of actions in scenarios presented in the previous section can be supported by these interfaces in the following way. 
 

scenario		interface
A	she decides to organize the bookmarks using folders.  When she clicks on an icon in the menu bar to create a new folder,  a dialog box comes up and asks her to type in the name of the folder.	1, 4	Judy can click on "New Folder" icon in the menu bar of Main Window (1). A dialog box comes up and she can specify name, and other attibutes of the folder. (4)
	Judy moves icons of bookmarks to the folder using mouse.	5	She selects icons of the sites in the right frame with mouse and move them to the new folder. (5) If she selects the sites at the time creating the new folder, these sites will be stored automatically in it. (4)
	She opens yesterday's history folder and finds the site by browsing titles in the history.  She moves the icon of the site to the "Job Search" folder in the same way.	2, 5	She can stay in the same window to view history files (2). She moves the history file to a bookmark folder in the same way she moved a bookmarked file. (5)
B	He specifies the folder to add bookmarks for all web pages visited more than 5 times or viewed for more than 5 minutes.	6	He goes to Preference menu to open a dialog box to set various preferences.
	he'll organize the automatically collected bookmarks in appropriate folders according to their contents.	1, 2, 3, 4, 5	He can easily organize bookmarks using mouse.
C	Naomi then decides to click on the toggle switch on their menu bar that changes the mode of viewing from flat text to graphical.  She is presented with a screen that shows a set of documents viewed as large icons and that are organized in vertical tree structures.	7	She clicks on an icon in the menu bar to change the view.
	She can open a search window and type in what she remembers.  Not only the history file but also the bookmarks are searched at once...Naomi is presented with a list of related sites she has visited and finds the site she wants.	8	She clicks on "Search" icon in the menu bar. A dialog box pops up and she tyes in a word she remembers about the site. The search result is displayed in the main window.

5. Experiment Outline

Informal Testing

We will use a paper based low fidelity prototype to perform informal testing of the user interface. The testing will hopefully reveal something about the usability of the proposed interface, and be helpful in the process of enhancing the lo fi prototype in the later stages of the design process.

Formal Study 
Independent Variables: Different icons, help information and menu items to find out difference in users' performance.  

Dependent Variables: The performance is judged by time and the number of mouse clicks to complete a task as well as user preferences.   

Methods: The test will consist of a series of tasks to add, find and edit using the new interface.  For example,  

1. Add a bookmark
2. Create a new category in Personal List
3. Find a certain page which the user bookmarked
4. Find a certain page which someone else visited or bookmarked 

Participants: Two types of users are expected to participate in the test; those who have experience in using bookmark and history functions of current browsers and those who don't know how to use these functions.  

Results: It is expected that it takes less time to find a particular page when it has icons for frequently used commands and improved edit menus. In addition, users will find it is easier to organize bookmarks with new interface than in existing browsers. 

6. Appendix

• Screen shots of current interfaces for bookmark and history functions in Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer
• Online bookmark service - MyBookmarks (thanks to Manuel Figallo)