she has changed her thinking over time, particularly with regard to resolution
The nature of information, including its quality and value;
• The contexts of information seeking, including social, cultural, and professional settings and
practices;
• Seeker characteristics, including cognitive traits, social intelligence, individual differences,
social roles, demographics, and other relevant concepts drawn from user studies;
• The precursors to information seeking, for example information needs, problematic situations,
knowledge gaps, Anomalous State of Knowledge (ASK), sense‐making, etc.;
• Representations of inquiry, including question negotiation, problem statements, narratives,
framing, queries, search term selection, and the role of language;
• Search strategies and techniques, for example search tactics, heuristics or browsing;
• Barriers to information seeking, including social and economic resources and inequity, language
barriers, technical/infrastructural issues, avoidance, and so on; and
• Resolution, that is, the adequacy or sufficiency of search results, or when searching is
abandoned or reframed.
Relevance-->recall : precision
the more precise the response, the less "stuff" you're getting
the more stuff you're getting, the less precise the results
Schamberg relevance is the central concept
, Saracevic
Tefko
Case
Chapter 5: Decisions, Browsing, Relevance, Avoidance & Entertainment
We have limits to both our brain's attention and ability to process information. Decision-making is the search for and choice among alternatives. But, because of our limits, we don't want too many choices or we become overwhelmed and choose based on only ONE, prioritized attribute.
Feedback within web interactions can alter our mindless behavior/decisions, such as the ability to narrow searches progressively with facets or Google's "Did you mean...?"
Browsing is a more informal or unplanned type of search behavior, somewhat like foraging for food. Motivations for this (curiosity, interest, usefulness, play, entertainment, etc.) vary. Information foraging theory can be a helpful mental model when designing news sites, for instance, to have connected areas of interesting "food" for thought and when designing advertising headlines for articles.
Relevance (a relationship of value) is how you recognize an interesting item when browsing. Salience is something that stands out (see gestalt psychology for useful distinctions), although it may not be relevant (like a blinking ad).
Sometimes we avoid information that contradicts our point of view (cognitive dissonance) or because there's too much of it. While we cannot do much about the dissonance, IAs can and should provide filters to address the that overload. At a basic level, this is what a heirarchical sitemap does.
Information can cause emotions.
For instance, without coping strategies, information can CAUSE anxiety (not just reduce it). There are a number of overload coping strategies:
- Omission
- Error
- Queueing
- Filtering
- Approximation
- Multiple channels
- Escaping
However, even though we need to filters, we don't want to filter out all the interesting stuff. We also want stimulation (curiosity, novelty). There's a fine line between fun comprehensibility and boring sameness.
Some groups of people get less information than others, called information poverty or a knowledge gap. It's important for IAs to consciously attend to different groups, and decrease barriers to learning, when designing for users.
People prefer other human beings as sources of information, so crowdsourcing and social ranking will likely become more important. As an example, think of Amazon's reviews.
Facts are most easily understood when presented in an entertaining manner. Perhaps this is why the Daily Show is so popular?
Bibliography
Case, D. (2008). Looking for information: a survey of research on information seeking, needs, and behaviors, 2nd Edition. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. ISBN: 978-0123694300.
Saracevic 1975:324
Schamber 1994: 3, 36
Furner 2004: 444
Harter
relevance is highly idiosyncratic
dynamic
active
context: in terms of relevance, changes into a very cognitively oriented assessment of disposition, perceptions, and how influenced by the social realities of the seeker; also the context is dynamic
constant change as new information is integrated
needs: thru the lens of relevance-->may not be a particular need state; not like the old-fashioned matching of query
Howard White (Drecel) there are these corpora of materials in the world out of which our field is supposed to help people find answers
from that classic point of view, the need is the question
the relevance idea could fit that, but the way a lot of researchers approach it, that need state and simple delivery of an answer are not sufficient for the resolution
the answer may actually open up more seeking rather than end
compromised theory: taylor any statement is inadequate to express the need
furner says we have to have a theory to predict, but from a cognitive perspective can't predict
MT: i can use this-->bc we can predict cognitive reaction to stimuli, we may be able to broadly predict
more extert, less able to explain your expertise
Mike Cz. flow --> almost like a different language in the moment of flow that can't be translated
can't represent it
search processes-->we're really looking at conjecture-->Bates's berrypicking
MT: it's true also that we sometimes get rotten berries
trial and error-->heuristic search; conjectural process really important for this conception of relevance
relevance then becomes the relationship of premise, tktk, and a context
MT: resolution is returning to the non-anxious state
In his definition of psychological relevance, Wilson examines
not only the moment the relevance judgment is
made, but also effects that an item may have on the user’s
behavior after the judgment has been made. He states that
psychological relevance “has to do with the actual uses and
actual effects of information: how people use information
and how their views change or fail to change consequent to
the receipt of information” (p. 458).
Foskett (1972) proposes an additional
synonym for relevance, “ pertinence.” Pertinence, unlike
objective relevance, ‘ should be taken to mean, “ adding
new information to the store already in the mind of the user,
which is useful to him in the work that prompted the
request’” (p. 77). Thus, for Foskett, relevance is subjective
and includes novelty.
According to Cooper (1973), utility is user-oriented,
and is “ a catch-all concept involving not only topicrelatedness
but also quality, novelty, importance, credibility,
and many other things” (p. 92), i.e., things of value to
the user. With these synonyms, Foster and Cooper offer
what, in later studies, individuals identify as their criteria for
relevance.
Froehlich (1994)
suggests that a single defi nition may not be the answer:
“ The absence of a unifi ed defi nition of relevance does not
mean that information scientists cannot determine the diverse
criteria that people bring to systems by which to judge
its output” (p. 129).
In a
recent study by Tang, Vevea, and Shaw (1999), a variety of
scales were compared to determine one that optimized the
participant’ s confi dence in the judgment. Although the seven-
point scale was found to correlate most highly with user
confi dence, it was also found that regardless of scale, participants
tended to utilize the end points most frequently.
This may indicate that while relevance judgments can be
affected by the relevance scale, the scale, in and of itself,
cannot ease the decision making process when the item is
neither relevant nor not relevant. This may be because the
notion of middling degrees of relevance is very poorly
defi ned, if at all, in the scales.
the issue of scales is well articulated in Sonnenwald, and I will resist the urge to crib. Instead, the variety and ambiguity noted by the authors leads me to take another approach by focusing on what is done with the documents, rather than how users characterize their usefulness.
Spink and Greisdorf (1997) suggest novelty may also be
a factor: “ the retrieval of partially relevant items played a
crucial role in providing these users with new information
and directions that may lead them through further stages of
their information seeking process” (p. 276)
didn't know what they were looking for, but were intentionally seeking info
three characteristic activities/behaviors that reflect three levels of intensity
think about it terms of the relationship bt those characteristic moments against the intensity levels
MT: put it in a matrix
the thing that distinguished the levels was their mobility and location
Clarice's presentation
social interaction was the source of most information transfer
artifacts are not always clear in their intent to outsiders; "zine culture is really rummagy"
relevance occurs from interest and salience
the physicality along with the information--just as important as the ostensible information that ppl are seeking
Elaine's presentation
Eunjoo's presentation
16 million trips, not 16B ppl
routine-->can think of it as zoning out, similar (but different from) being in the zone
MT: when there is a surprise, I wonder whether people have a more difficult time adapting
Jeremy's presentation
browsing is a subcategory of ongoing search
doesn't info flow from the casual leisure people, too?
Leah says he's modeling ongoing search as a social process
MT: the serious leisure folks are gaining status by bringing us novices; plus, who would be making queries if everyone is an expert?
Karlyn's presentation
Ashley's presentation
Claire's presentation
the dot in the arrow is a point of synthesis
the kind of generalist retail environment is "big box" so there is a high employee to customer ratio
a non-expert consumerbase in a non-expert store
people shop on price and loyalty club
not a linear process
three kinds of consultation
Rachel's presentation
information seeking as a misnomer
model developed by Pamela McKenzie on study of women pregnant with twins-->unifying factor
incidental info-sskg behaviors
individual-in-context
MT: what about active availability for seeking (same thing as expert scenarios in wine bar, etc)
info skkg in urban public space
box is the situation
dotted box is the norms, expectations, etiquette
the dotted line is a barrier requiring adherence to the norms
Dervin's sensemaking happens in the interaction
dogs as agents by which people enter the situation
and physical barriers
insider/outsider status--> heavy dotted line at the bottom
MT: forgot it 🙁
the situation factors at the top may not be matched 1:1
Leslie's presentation
three stages-->can moving among them at will according to what's salient for you at that moment
Karlyn's presentation
"the map sux"
evaluation-->communicating with the child
is this a path model, or is this connected bc they are all happening at the same time?
attendee factors begin situational factors
info need
choice of action
implementation
evaluation
how families mediated
Scott's presentation
ppl go to the most familiar source in ELIS
he didn't see ppl going to formal sources
satisficing-->you being contented, not necessarily have the best info
go through the confortable sources and trying to avoid the formal, authoritative encounters; habit/routine
progressive move through more and more exotic resources from more familiar to least familiar
avoidance of authority
MT: just like in my situation
