Extracting implicit tree structures in spreadsheet calculation

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Abstract
While information search in user interfaces has mainly been studied with menu systems, this paper extends the problem to spreadsheets, where it is important to extract, i.e. search and store in memory, implicit computational structures. The central concern is the extent to which subjects' cursor paths follow visible surface structures (i.e., the systems of occupied and unoccupied cells) and the extent to which their information intake is controlled by the deep structure (i.e., the references of equations to be computed) when they extract the computational structure of a spreadsheet. To understand this, cursor movements collected in three experiments in which subjects tried to learn ten different types of spreadsheets are analysed. The analysis shows that subjects base their information search almost totally on the surface structure of spreadsheets. As a consequence, they have great difficulties with spreadsheets where the surface structure is very inconsistent with the deep structure. They are unable to use the surface structure with these spreadsheets to support memory for underlying structures, and as a result learning times increase greatly. The experiments suggest very strongly that spreadsheet systems should provide facilities to make the deep structure visible.

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