Research Reports

• Research Reports Home
• UC Research Repository
• Honours Reports
• Reports Manager (CSSE Staff Only)

HONS 03/12

Improving File Navigation with Spatially Consistent Revistation Visualisation

Joshua Leung
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
University of Canterbury

Abstract

People are storing an increasing amount of their data digitally in the form of files. However, many of the current navigation based interfaces are unable to support efficient retrieval of this information. We develop a file system crawler, and use this to conduct a user study to characterise the structural features and temporal usage patterns of file systems. Based on these findings and the extensive prior literature, we develop a spatially consistent representation of entire file systems which is augmented with colour- coded tags allowing efficient access to temporally relevant target folders within the file system (SCOFT). We conduct a user study to evaluate the effectiveness of this technique and the supporting techniques developed. Our findings show that SCOFT allows users to revisit files 3 times faster than when using a standard file browser.