Paper Reading #28: Vocabulary Navigation Made Easier

Reference Information:

Title: Vocabulary Navigation Made Easier

Authors: Sonya Nikolova, Xiaojuan Ma, Marilyn Tremaine, Perry Cook

Venue: IUI 2010, Hong Kong, China 

Comments: 

Comment 1

Comment 2

Summary: 

This paper talks about an application called ViVA that can be used to find words. The author discusses past work with similar interfaces that implement this system with a hierarchy of subjects. This can be confusing and lead to long searches for a single word. 

This type of interface was designed help individuals with lexical disorders who would have trouble finding words normally. This is reflected in ViVA's name which stands for visual vocabulary for aphasia.

ViVA tries to use a model that most of us live our lives by daily. This kind of hierarchy used in ViVA is what the author called Lingraphica.

The study used a group of people that used previously used hierarchy system for finding words and another group that used the new ViVA system. The results showed that people found words faster with the new system. 

Discussion:

This idea is great because it helps aid people with disabilities. It could also be useful for other purposes such as little children or people trying to learn a second language.