We present Omnipedia, a system that allows Wikipedia readers to gain insight from up to 25 language editions of Wikipedia simultaneously. Omnipedia highlights the similarities and differences that exist among Wikipedia language editions, and makes salient information that is unique to each language as well as that which is shared more widely. We detail solutions to numerous front-end and algorithmic challenges inherent to providing users with a multilingual Wikipedia experience. These include visualizing content in a language-neutral way and aligning data in the face of diverse information organization strategies. We present a study of Omnipedia that characterizes how people interact with information using a multilingual lens. We found that users actively sought information exclusive to unfamiliar language editions and strategically compared how language editions defined concepts. Finally, we briefly discuss how Omnipedia generalizes to other domains facing language barriers.

The rapid increase in smart phone capabilities has introduced new opportunities for mobile information access and computing. However, smart phone use may still be constrained by both device affordances and work environments. To understand how current business users employ smart phones and to identify opportunities for improving business smart phone use, we conducted two studies of actual and perceived performance of standard work tasks. Our studies involved 243 smart phone users from a large corporation. We intentionally chose users who primarily work with desktops and laptops, as these "non-mobile" users represent the largest population of business users. Our results go beyond the general intuition that smart phones are better for consuming than producing information: we provide concrete measurements that show how fast reading is on phones and how much slower and more effortful text entry is on phones than on computers. We also demonstrate that security mechanisms are a significant barrier to wider business smart phone use. We offer design suggestions to overcome these barriers.

Despite the prevalent use of group brainstorming for problem solving and decision-making within organizations, brainstorming sessions often lack focus and fail to produce quality ideas. We describe Momentum, a tool that elicits topic-oriented responses prior to a group brainstorm. In an exploratory study, we found qualitative differences in task focus, quality and rate of ideation, and efficiency of storytelling between users and non-users of the tool.

This study explores how the design of visual display configurations relates to linguistic expressions. Twenty-five participants performed a series of object identification and narrative Description tasks on either a large wall-sized or small desktop display. Results revealed that during the Description tasks, large display users produced significantly greater rates of local deictic references than small display users, but in the identification tasks, the rates were similar for both large and small display users. Implications for the design of interactive technologies are discussed.