[Sigia-l] Measurement for UI effectifness?

[Patrick Debois]

I'm currently working around a search project on video material.

We have identified 4 work areas where actions will take place around 
this material:
1)metadata/data: what can be searched of the material
2)query: the formulation of what needs to be retrieved by the system
3)search: the process of taking the metadata/data, the query and 
returning the result
4)result: returning the result set (visualizing, exploring, browsing)

We do different actions to f.i. extract more metadata, combine metadata, 
use different interfaces (timeline, geo search, ..) , indexing 
techniques (stemming,clustering...) and giving feedback into the system 
again (others have searched, rating mechanism)

Area 3 (Search) seems to be typically focused around precision and 
recall (cfr. 
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/text/htdocs/imt_quality.htm )
Area 1 (Metadata) has metrics on correctness, completeness (cfr. 
http://ariadne.cs.kuleuven.be/wordpress/comdir/?p=2)

What i'm looking for the kind of metrics that typically define the 
successfactor of Area 2 & 4:
They are very related to userinterface and findability topics .

As UI design has a lot to do with the human senses we are speculating on

a)Kinestetic part

    * Time spent finding the result, Formulating the query -> relates to
      keypress, scrolling)
    * Effort taken to find the result,  (again # keypress, scrolling,
      mouseclicks)

b)Visual part?

    *  Condense information vs. screen real estate?

c) Audio part?


It is clear that the application of techniques depend on the modes of 
searching (cfr.  
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/four_modes_of_seeking_information_and_how_to_design_for_them 
)
So the number may vary, but I'm looking for the measurements.

Patrick