COGNITIVE STRATEGIES
IN WEB SEARCHING
Original paper by:
Raquel Navarro-Prieto, Mike Scaife, Yvonne Rogers
School of Cognitive and Computer Sciences,
University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
June 1999
Summary
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The
The
The
The
The
The
problem : users get lost in the web
questions : why? How to avoid?
goal : empirical web searching model
strategy : the interactivity framework
implementation : tasks & interviews
results : representations and skills
Lost in the web
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People get lost in the web :
• Don’t know how to search...
• Don’t even know what to search...
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A good design can help! But...
• Different people + same interface =
different strategies
• Dependencies (interactions) among
users
tasks
representations
All that’s worth is...
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Three main factors :
• Users’ experience and strategies
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Browsing strategy
Empirical strategy
What else ?
• Type of searching task :
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Fact-finding (look for Dijkstra algorithm)
Exploratory (all about a 1997 Nobel Prize)
• How the information is presented :
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(only) textual
(also) graphical
(even) multimedia
The interactivity framework
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External Cognition : interplay between
internal and external representations
Computational offloading : measures how
much an info is easy to understand
• re-representation
• graphical constraining
• Temporal and spatial constraining
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How do all of these interplay and guide
the users choices ?
The study
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23 students with different skills :
• 10 Computer scientists
• 13 Psychologists
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Half an hour to perform four tasks
using whichever site or engine
• Video-records
• Interviews
• Questionnaire
The tasks
Searching
conditions
Dispersed
structure
Category
structured
Fact Finding
Look for database
algorithm in Java
(CS)
Look for criteria for
the diagnosis of
diseases (Psy)
Look for word
definitions
Exploratory
Find all the available
jobs for profession
Find all information
about 1997 Nobel
Prize for Literature
Human performances
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CS were smarter (of course ;-) )
Almost all were satisfied
Almost no one remembered useless
queries or strategies
Almost all remembered only or
better the last search
Some difficulties with more than 3
windows
Results
Task
Dispersed
structure
Category
structure
Experienced
FACT FINDING :
bottom up or
mixed
EXPLORATORY :
top down
Novice
Top down at first,
then bottom up
Type without
planning
Top down through
categories
Top down or mixed
Bottom up at first,
then top down
Searching model (experienced)
Conclusions
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External representation matters!
• clarifying what’s useful and what is not
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Graphical constrains matter!
• misleading graphs = waste of time
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Spatial/Temporal constrains matter!
• Too many windows or too many clicks
= little lost users...
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Further effort is needed :
• to understand internal/external interplay
• to structure the sites in a user-friendly way
• to help the newbies without penalizing the experts
Questions ?