1 The Use of Provenance in Information Retrieval Simone Stumpf Erin Fitzhenry Tom Dietterich

2 Defining Provenance To us, provenance concerns: The origin of content within documents The relationships between documents AttachmentSaveSaveAs

3 Why focus on Provenance for Information Retrieval? People remember the relationships between documents! Episodic vs. Semantic Memory Studies: Blanc-Brude & Scapin (2007) Gonçalves & Jorge (2004) No need to formulate keyword queries Other common document attributes are often inaccurately remembered (Blanc-Brude & Scapin 2007): Title (20% false recall) Size (53.8% false recall) Time (47.6% false recall)

4 Example Use Case: “Where did I save that again?” I got an from Tom… I saved the attachment… And I pasted some information from the attachment into a PowerPoint document… Where did that presentation go??

5 Requirements for Tracking and Visualizing Provenance Instrument all important document provenance events Provenance events are NOT automatically captured by Windows Develop a UI enabling users to locate documents via the provenance relationships they remember Integrate the UI into the Windows Desktop

6 Capturing Provenance Events with TaskTracer TaskTracer is a Personal Information Management system User defines a hierarchy of Projects or Activities As the user works, TaskTracer automatically tags (according to task/project): Files Folders Messages Contacts Web pages

7 Instrumenting TT to Capture Provenance Events TaskTracer already instruments many desktop events: Open, Save, SaveAs, Close Arrived, Open, Close Open URL, Close URL, Follow Hyperlink Idea: Extend existing instrumentation to cover key provenance events CopyPaste, SaveAs, FileCopy/Rename AttachmentAdd, AttachmentOpen, AttachmentSave, Forward*, Reply* FileDownload, FileUpload* *Coming soon

8 Instrumenting TaskTracer to capture Provenance Events (cont.) A Provenance Event “From” Resource“To” Resource Event_idEvent_typeEvent_time SaveAs10233Jan 12 oldFile.doc Id: 1768 etc. newFile.doc Id: 1923 etc. Database of document-to-document provenance relationships

9 A tool for visualizing provenance Developing a User Interface: TaskTrail User’s Query Click to Expand Mouse over details Double-click to open

10 Integrating TaskTrail into the Windows UI Launch a query by right clicking on an item within Windows Explorer, Outlook, TaskExplorer

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14 Research Questions Does TaskTrail help users find documents more quickly than other methods? How should the provenance graph be laid out? What kind of provenance events do users accurately recall? How large are the provenance graphs? What patterns exist (if any) in terms of the succession of provenance events?

15 User Studies: Formative Observational Study (planned) What provenance-related actions do users perform? Which of those do they remember? Observe 12 participants in their workplaces Record provenance-related actions performed Interview participants after 1 week to see what they remember Free Recall Cued Recall How do users layout their documents according to what they remember?

16 User Studies: Summative TaskTrail Study at Intel (in progress) 4 participants (so far) are using TaskTracer for at least 1 month each Then they will use TaskTrail to locate their own documents Measures of success: Do users locate more documents using TaskTrail? Do users locate documents more quickly using TaskTrail? Do users prefer using TaskTrail?

17 Provenance-related User Studies are Hard! Must be done “in the wild” Involves: Long time-scales, which increase chances that: Participants will drop out Situation on site will change Potentially sensitive information s to/from users not participating in the study Documents regarding trade secrets Installation of some event-tracking software Software installation/maintenance can introduce compatibility, scheduling and other problems

18 Summary: TaskTrail TaskTrail Instruments desktop provenance relationships Allows user to query by right-clicking objects User can browse visualization of provenance relationships to find desired documents Exploits human episodic memory to help users find documents