Information retrieval systems support users in finding relevant information in data sets. List layouts are wide-spread, but spatial layouts are catching up. User studies that systematically show their benefits for users are missing. We report on a comparative between-subject study with 43 participants comparing a spatial layout with a list layout. One group performed a task with a system providing semantic visualization, and the other group performed the same task with a system without semantic visualization. The results show that the users of the spatial layout had significantly more interaction with the system in shorter time, with a slightly higher outcome and higher satisfaction.

Der Einsatz von Künstlicher Intelligenz und maschinellem Lernen verändern die Bedingungen für Mediaplanung nachhaltig. Das wirkt sich gerade auch auf das Daten basierte Programmatic Advertising aus.

Human Factors in Hypertext 2021 (HUMAN'21) is the 4th workshop in this series. It is sponsored by ACM SIGWEB and is associated to the ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media 2021, which took place between August 30th and September 2nd as a virtual event. HUMAN'21 took place on August 30th-the conference's workshop day. This year's workshop is held in a difficult time: the global Corona pandemic makes attending meetings or traveling risky for our health. It almost seems as a contradiction to the 2019 ACM Hypertext motto "tear down the wall". However, today's digital media enables us to communicate over distance or even attend larger meetings online. This also opens the question about the role of hypertext as a medium for communication-a perfect topic match for the HUMAN workshop series, which has a user-centric focus on hypertext. The user-centric view not only includes user interfaces and interaction, but also discussions about hypertext application domains. Furthermore, the workshop raises the question of how original hypertext ideas (e.g., Doug Engelbart's "augmenting human intellect" or Frank Halasz' "hypertext as a medium for thinking and communication") can improve today's hypertext systems. As such, the HUMAN workshop also appreciates previous work on hypertext systems. In order to support this, we invite researchers to give demos of vintage hypertext systems. Last year we started with Norman Meyrowitz presenting Intermedia; this year Mark Anderson has been invited to give a demo of Microcosm.

Historically, there has been a tendency to consider hypertext as a type of system, perhaps characterised by provision of links or other structure to users. In this article, we consider hypertext as a method of inquiry, a way of viewing arbitrary systems. In this view, what are traditionally called “navigational hypertext systems” might be considered as information retrieval systems. This opens the hypertext field to various other types of systems that traditionally would not be considered as part of the field. The change of view enables a deeper fusion of human and machine. In particular, today's AI-based, intelligent systems open the demand of synthesising automation (on the machine's side) and augmentation (on the user's side). This article is not about researching AI systems; it is about extending the view of hypertext systems to synthesise augmentation and automation. We specifically apply this view to intelligent systems, asking the question about how hypertext can act as a common medium between human and machine, particularly for knowledge intensive tasks. We propose spatial hypertext as a medium that enables users to create cognitive maps. Along these lines, we provide examples from multiple projects and examine how these applications can be productive.

Software integration, especially in Open Source Software (OSS), suffers from technical debt as software evolves over time. Evolvement often ends in incompatibility issues like changed or removed APIs. The problems increase, as more components need to be integrated. This article analyzes common problems in OSS integration with respect to technical debt esp. externally induced technical debt and collects empirical evidence from the case study "AMiProSI" which combines different functions of various OSS systems to create a unified intranet solution. As part of the analysis, this paper discusses component-based development and its related dependencies and explains related technical debt (TD). By bringing down the individual problems in sub-categories of technical debt, we show what kind of TD has arisen in our case study AMiProSI and give advice on how this could be prevented in other projects.

Migraine is common in childhood, peaks in adolescents and persists into adulthood in at least 40% of patients. There is need for early interventions to improve the burden of disease and, if possible, reduce chronification. The aim of the project is to compare two types of ambulatory treatment strategies regarding their effect on headache days and quality of life in 6 to 11 year old children with migraine: 1) the routine care in pediatricians’ practices (intervention group A) and 2) a structured interdisciplinary multimodal intervention administered at social pediatric centers (intervention group B).

The increasing availability of audio data on the internet lead to a multitude of datasets for development and training of text to speech applications, based on neural networks. Highly differing quality of voice, low sampling rates, lack of text normalization and disadvantageous alignment of audio samples to corresponding transcript sentences still limit the performance of deep neural networks trained on this task. Additionally, data resources in languages like German are still very limited. We introduce the "HUI-Audio-Corpus-German", a large, open-source dataset for TTS engines, created with a processing pipeline, which produces high quality audio to transcription alignments and decreases manual effort needed for creation.

In this conceptual paper the authors provide a new approach for sales excellence in the digital era. Besides clarifying the objective and identifying the major dimensions of sales excellence in the context of digital transformation, the paper will particularly provide a concept for a proper sales excellence assessment as well as shed some light on the implications and costs of not following the sales excellence approach.

The increasing application of digital technologies is transforming sales considerably. However, it is unclear how sales can adapt properly – particularly from the B2B sales skills side. Despite the urgency of this matter, in-depth research on B2B sales skills in the digital era remains sparse. In this structured abstract, a new conceptual model for a more modern B2B skill set is thus developed in a cross-country study. As a preliminary result, most of the traditional sales skills are still required in future, but need to be complemented by intercultural as well as digital sales skills.

The majority of business-to-business companies are working on their digital transformation in sales. Despite enormous transformation efforts, the expected productivity gains are often missing in most companies. Based on empirical research, this paper aims to develop a new market- oriented transformation model. Management implications as well as future research directions are derived for a more focused digital transformation process in sales. Design/methodology/approach – Within the exploratory research study, 90 key informants were interviewed to provide better insights in the context of digital transformation in sales. The accuracy of the research results was safeguarded by triangulation. Findings – As this research paper will show, the reasons for the missing productivity gains caused by a limited knowledge about the main success factors of digital transformation as well as a lack of understanding of digital transformation as an evolving process. Originality/value – Based on the empirical research, a new market-oriented transformation model is developed and management implications as well as future research directions are derived for a more focused digital transformation process in sales.

Companies are either proactively driving the digital transformation or are forced to digitalize by markets and eco-systems. In order to identify the status about the digital transformation of sales in practice and to get deeper knowledge about treated areas in sales and challenges on the path of digitalization, in-depth interviews of sales executives and managers of more than 50 internationally operating companies in three countries Germany, Finland and Austria were conducted in this research. The results show that one major goal for companies is to accelerate digitizing processes as digitalization helps to work more efficiently. Access to systems is necessary, hence investments in digitalization are seen as sustainable and absolutely essential. Digital tools lead to adaptions in the sales process as with support sales processes and sales management. Accelerated also by the COVID-19 crisis, face-to-face customer visits have been reduced even more and online meetings have increased as the speed of response has become more and more important. Finally, the necessary skill set of a sales force has to be adapted, which has to be further researched in the future, having support of higher education institutions being the order of the day. Companies have realized that a good sales pitch does not necessarily need to be in person, due to the new virtual technology.

KI und maschinelles Lernen sind in aller Munde, gerade im Marketing – aber gilt das auch für den B2B-Bereich? Welche konkreten Einsatzmöglichkeiten gibt es?