About
Procyon Lab studies how people interact with web infrastructure — URLs, naming systems, link structures, and the interfaces built on top of them. Our work sits at the intersection of HCI, information architecture, and web engineering.
We focus on practical research questions: how do users interpret and trust URLs? How do link-sharing patterns affect information quality? What makes web addresses usable, robust, and maintainable at scale?
Research Areas
- URL usability and user mental models of web addresses
- Link rot measurement and longitudinal web archiving studies
- Shortlink behavior, redirect chains, and transparency
- DNS and naming systems from a user-experience perspective
- Trust signals in browser address bars and link previews
- Cross-platform link consistency (email, chat, docs, mobile)
Recent Work
- Measuring Link Rot Across Academic Citation Networks — tracking URL decay in CS conference proceedings (2019–2025)
- Do Users Read URLs? — an eye-tracking study of address bar attention during navigation tasks
- Shortlink Transparency — user comprehension of redirect destinations before and after preview interventions
- Subdomain Semantics — how subdomain naming conventions affect perceived credibility of web services
People
Dr. Mira Patel
Principal Investigator
Web naming systems, URL usability
James Okonkwo
PhD Candidate
Link rot and web archiving
Sofia Chen
PhD Candidate
Trust signals in browser UI
Ravi Krishnamurthy
MS Student
Redirect chain analysis
Shiven Chawla
MS Student
URL structures and HCI exercises
Teaching
Lab members contribute to courses on web systems, HCI methods, and information architecture. Course materials and exercises are periodically shared for use by collaborating institutions.
Contact
Procyon Lab is part of the School of Information. For inquiries about collaboration or student opportunities, reach us at lab@procyonlab.org.