Determining relevancy: how software developers determine relevant information in feeds

Finding relevant information within the vast amount of information exchanged via feeds is difficult. Previous research into this problem has largely focused on recommending relevant information based on topicality. By not considering individual and situational factors these approaches fall short. Through a formative, interview-based study, we explored how five software developers determined relevancy of items in two kinds of project news feeds. We identified four factors that the developers used to help determine relevancy and found that placement of items in source code and team contexts can ease the determination of relevancy. Author Keywords News feeds, relevancy, context, interview study. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces. General Terms Human Factors.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Thomas Fritz, Gail C. Murphy
• Keywords: CHI 2011, Human Computer Interaction, Interview Study, Situational Factors, Software Developers