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A performance model of system delay and user strategy selection
CHI '92 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
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ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS)
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MobiCom '95 Proceedings of the 1st annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking
Exploiting weak connectivity for mobile file access
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ACM SIGCHI Bulletin
On the contributions of different empirical data in usability testing
DIS '00 Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques
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MLICS '95 Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on Mobile and Location-Independent Computing
Translucent cache management for mobile computing
Translucent cache management for mobile computing
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Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS)
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Mobile computing has been an active area of research for the past decade, but its importance will increase substantially in the decade to come. One problem faced by designers of mobile systems is that of maintaining the illusion of connectivity even when network performance is poor or non-existent. The Coda file system uses its cache to maintain this illusion. Extensive experience with the system suggests that, although users find the functionality provided by the system extremely valuable, new users face an arduous learning curve and even experienced users are sometimes confused by the system's behavior. The fundamental problem is that the lack of a strong network connection causes the system to violate a key property of caching: transparency. To overcome this problem, we have built an interface, called the CodaConsole, that makes caching translucent to users through controlled exposure of cache management internals. The interface exposes critical aspects of caching to support the mobile user while hiding noncritical details to preserve usability. This article presents the design, implementation, and usability evaluation of this interface. The CodaConsole successfully makes caching translucent in the presence of disconnected or weakly connected operation. The most surprising result was that novice Coda users performed almost as well as experienced Coda users.