Publications

From Cyclopath

Below are papers we've published about our research on Cyclopath. You may also be interested in other GroupLens Publications.

[edit] Conference Papers

1. Reid Priedhorsky, Benjamin Jordan, Loren Terveen. “How a Personalized Geowiki Can Help Bicyclists Share Information More Effectively”. Short paper. Proc. WikiSym 2007

   • Acceptance rate: 50%
   • Fulltext: PDF, ACM master
   • Key contributions:
     • Formalize the notion of geowiki (an online map which allows editing of all geographic features displayed and supports standard wiki monitoring features) and introduce the notion of personalized geowiki (a geowiki which can customize itself according to individuals’ needs).
     • Analyze the information needs of bicyclists and show that they need an information resource which is comprehensive, up-to-date, and personalized — properties met by a personalized geowiki.
     • Show that the geowiki model is plausible: for example, 73% of subjects were willing to spend at least five minutes correcting a map error if the result would be available to other cyclists immediately, but only 44% if availability would take six months.

2. Reid Priedhorsky and Loren Terveen. “The Computational Geowiki: What, Why, and How”. In Proc. CSCW 2008.

   • Honorable Mention in the conference Best Paper awards.
   • Acceptance rate: 23%
   • Fulltext: PDF, ACM master
   • Key contributions:
     • Invent the notion of computational geowiki, a geowiki where user contributions feed into an algorithm (in our case, route finding).
     • Present the design and implementation of a computational geowiki (early Cyclopath), producing significant design innovations and solving important implementation challenges.
     • Show quantitatively that geowiki and computational geowiki features form a powerful knowledge sharing tool in a representative domain, bicycling, suggesting the general utility of geowikis and computational geowikis.

3. Michael Ludwig, Reid Priedhorsky, and Loren Terveen. “Path selection: A novel interaction technique for mapping applications”. In Proc. CHI 2009.

   • Acceptance rate: 25%
   • Fulltext: ACM master
   • Key contributions:
     • Present a novel technique for user selection of routes within a graph, called path selection, based on dynamic shortest-path computation and continuously updated visual feedback.
     • Show quantitatively the benefits of path selection in comparison to state-of-the-art techniques: faster route selection, fewer errors, and greater user satisfaction.
     • Discover the properties of routes that make path selection particularly beneficial: long straight segments and a close correspondence between algorithmically optimal and visually attractive nodes.

4. Reid Priedhorsky, Mikhil Masli, and Loren Terveen. “Eliciting and Focusing Geographic Volunteer Work”. In Proc. CSCW 2010, forthcoming.

   • Acceptance rate: 20%
   • Fulltext: PDF
   • Key contributions:
     • Devise two techniques to elicit and focus user work in a geowiki or similar system, one using familiarity to direct users to work opportunities and another visually highlighting them.
     • Show quantitatively the success of the techniques in eliciting work and the nature of the distribution of work across users.
     • Explain factors that contributed to the success of the techniques, for example that certain types of work require users to be familiar with the location of the work but others do not.
     • Show that user work meaningfully benefits the community — in particular, user work since Cyclopath went live has shortened the average route in Cyclopath by 1 kilometer.

5. Katherine Panciera, Reid Priedhorsky, Tom Erickson, and Loren Terveen. “Lurking? Cyclopaths? A Quantitative Lifecycle Analysis of User Behavior in a Geowiki”. In Proc. CHI 2010, forthcoming.

   • Acceptance rate: 22%
   • Key contributions:
     • Quantitatively analyze the lifecycle of users in an open-content system, including portions of the lifecycle which occur before account registration.
     • In particular, we show that users who eventually register do so soon after first encountering the site; i.e., users generally do little or no “educational lurking”.
     • Show that geographic locations viewed (private traces) are associated with locations edited (public traces), and this association grows stronger as a user's edit count increases. This has potentially interesting consequences for privacy and also for work elicitation techniques.

[edit] Abbreviations

• CHI — ACM International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. This is the premier global conference in the field of human-computer interaction.
• CSCW — ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. This is the premier global conference in the field of computer-supported human collaboration.
• GROUP — ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work.
• WikiSym — ACM International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration.