Discussion Notes SQ 2009 Week 4

Inside the Search Process:

Information Seeking from the User’s Perspective

• There exists a gap between how users access information and how it is provided

• No concept of users ideas

o Users are normally are confused and uncertain

• Sense making of searches is hard to do with natural language

• Paper by Jonathan Graden discussed

o Onion model for computer interaction

o Turn to social

o Interaction design

o Same as in this paper

o Individuals are drivers

• Question asked: Can you have a useful tool without a user interface?

o People are viewed as part of a machine

o We look at things as our time

• Then we talked about the “Need to address users problems”

• Model introduced

1) Physical – actual actions taken

2) Affective – feelings experienced

3) Cognitive – thoughts concerning both process and content

o User will move through these states

o These incorporate the whole user experience

o Feelings change as we work on projects

• How to use these feelings to work or make programs better?

o Studies used to layout ISP table 2 (367 from the five studies

o Importance to our research – useful to understanding the user but not worth copying in research

o Historical trends – normal for everyone

• Epistemology – The philosophical theory of knowledge

• By doing these studies she is trying to introduce the idea of changing our own epistemology

• This study was done a long time ago and thus differs from us because of the evolution of data.

• Table 3 Mismatch user focus rather than table 1 which was more system focused.