Austin R. Ward | Postdoctoral Researcher | ausrward (a) amazon.com

Bio

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My name is Austin Ward and I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at Amazon. I received my PhD from the School of Information and Library Science at UNC Chapel Hill under my advisor Prof. Rob Capra. Prior to starting my PhD I received my Master of Library and Information Science from Louisiana State University and Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

My research interests include human-computer interaction (HCI), interactive information retrieval (IIR), and usability across web, virtual reality, and augmented reality technologies. I have developed search assistance tools for the web and a variety of simple search applications for the HP Reverb G2 Omnicept, Oculus Quest VR HMD, HTC Vive, and Microsoft HoloLens, several which have been used in user studies.

Dissertation

Immersive Search: Comparing Conventional and Spatially Arranged Search Engine Result Pages in Immersive Virtual Environments 

Dates: October 2021 - May 2023
Role: Project lead, study design, system design, data analysis, writing
Status: Published
• Observe how users browse through and find answers for a given information need across four different immersive layouts of search engine results pages and two task types in virtual reality.

Publications & Presentations   

Google Scholar Profile

2023

Li, Y., Crescenzi, A., Ward, A. R., & Capra, R. (2023). Thinking inside the box: An evaluation of a novel search-assisting tool for supporting (meta) cognition during exploratory search. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Ward, A. R., Avula, S., Cheng, HF., Sarwar, S., Murdock, V., & Agichtein, E. (2023, July). Searching for Products in Virtual Reality: Understanding the Impact of Context and Result Presentation on User Experience. In Proceedings of the 46th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 2359-2363).

Ward, A. R., Choi, B., & Capra, R. (2023, March). Eyes on Immersive Search: Eye-Tracking Study of Search Engine Result Pages in Immersive Virtual Environments. In Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval.

Choi, B., Arguello, J., Capra, R., & Ward, A. R. (2023). The Influences of a Knowledge Representation Tool on Searchers with Varying Cognitive Abilities. ACM Transactions on Information Systems.

2021

Ward, A. R., Gu, Y. Avula, S., & Chakravarthula, P. (2021, July). Interacting with Information in Immersive Virtual Environments. SIGIR 2021 (Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval).

Ward, A. R. & Capra, R. (2021, July). OrgBox: Supporting Cognitive and Metacognitive Activities During Exploratory Search. SIGIR 2021 (Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval).

Crescenzi, A., Ward, A. R., Li, Y., & Capra, R. (2021, July). Supporting metacognition during exploratory search with the OrgBox. SIGIR 2021 (Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval).

Choi, B., Arguello, J., Capra, R., & Ward, A. R. (2021, March). OrgBox: A Knowledge Representation Tool to Support Complex Search Tasks. In Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (pp. 219-228).

Li, Y., Ward, A. R., & Capra, R. (2021, March). An Analysis of Information Types and Cognitive Activities Involved in Cross-session Search. In Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (pp. 313-317).

2020

Ward, A. R. & Capra, R. (2020, July). Immersive Search: Using Virtual Reality to Examine How a Third Dimension Impacts the Searching Process. In Proceedings of the 43rd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (pp. 1621-1624).

Ward, A. R. (2020, March). Immersive Search: Interactive Information Retrieval in Three-Dimensional Space. In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (pp. 503-506).

2019

Choi, B., Ward, A., Li, Y., Arguello, J., & Capra, R. (2019). The Effects of Task Complexity on the Use of Different Types of Information in a Search Assistance Tool. ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), 38(1), 1-28.

2018

Jin, T., Ward, A., & Yi, K. The Key to Fostering Transdisciplinary Research Collaboration: Finding the Connections. CAIS 2018 (the 46th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science, May 30 - June 1, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada).

Projects

Information Scaffolding and Search

Dates: October 2020 - March 2022
Role: Study design, programming
Environment: Ubuntu 16+, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, CSS, MySQL
Status: Published (TOIS 2022)
• Designing user study and system to explore the impact of information scaffolding on search tasks

Information Interactions in Virtual Reality  [YouTube System BETA Demo]

Dates: January 2021 - July 2021
Role: Project lead, study design, system design, data analysis, writing
Status: Published (SIGIR 2021)
• Studying a system designed and implemented to study how users interact with abstract information objects in immersive virtual environments in information retrieval contexts.

Evaluation of Search-Assisting Organizational Tools  [YouTube System Demo]  [GitHub]

Dates: April 2020 - October 2020
Role: Study design, programming, data analysis, writing
Environment: Ubuntu 16+, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, CSS, MySQL
Status: Published (SIGIR 2021)
• Designed and developed OrgDoc tool and modified OrgBox tool for comparative study on search assistance tools
• Co-designed user study, performed qualitative coding and quantitative data analysis, and co-wrote paper

Executive Functions and Search     [OrgBox Homepage (old)]

Dates: July 2019 - April 2020
Role: System design, programming
Environment: Ubuntu 16+, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, CSS, MySQL
Status: Published (CHIIR 2021)
• Designed and developed OrgBox search assistance tool to allow users to externalize and structure information

Immersive Search: Interactive Information Retrieval in Virtual Reality  [YouTube System Demo]

Dates: September 2019 - March 2020
Role: Study design, programming, moderator, data analysis, writer
Environment: Oculus Quest VR HMD, Visual Studio, Unity, C#, Ubuntu 16+, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, MySQL
Status: Published (SIGIR 2020)
• Designed mixed-methods user study to explore impacts of different spatial arrangement of information retrieval in VR
• Developed entire system in Unity to run on Oculus Quest VR headset to report interaction measures to DB
• Moderated and ran study with 39 participants in on-campus lab, including post-session interviews
• Paper on convergent analysis on user interactions and qualitative responses written and published

Information Types in Search Assistance Tools

Dates: July 2018 – April 2019
Role: Programming, moderator, data analysis, writer
Environment: Ubuntu 16+, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, CSS, MySQL
Status: Published (TOIS Dec. 2019)
• Designed and developed InfoBox search assistance tool provide users different types of info related to their search
• Moderated and ran 13 of 40 participants in on-campus lab, including simulated recall interviews
• Assisted with data analysis of interaction data, questionnaire data, and interview data