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Title: Files of a Feather Flock Together? Measuring and Modeling How Users Perceive File Similarity in Cloud Storage
Prior work suggests that users conceptualize the organization of personal collections of digital files through the lens of similarity. However, it is unclear to what degree similar files are actually located near one another (e.g., in the same directory) in actual file collections, or whether leveraging file similarity can improve information retrieval and organization for disorganized collections of files. To this end, we conducted an online study combining automated analysis of 50 Google Drive and Dropbox users' cloud accounts with a survey asking about pairs of files from those accounts. We found that many files located in different parts of file hierarchies were similar in how they were perceived by participants, as well as in their algorithmically extractable features. Participants often wished to co-manage similar files (e.g., deleting one file implied deleting the other file) even if they were far apart in the file hierarchy. To further understand this relationship, we built regression models, finding several algorithmically extractable file features to be predictive of human perceptions of file similarity and desired file co-management. Our findings pave the way for leveraging file similarity to automatically recommend access, move, or delete operations based on users' prior interactions with similar files.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1801663 1835890
PAR ID:
10227474
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the 44th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR '21)
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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