Chun Wei Choo, Brian Detlor and Don Turnbull

Keywords

world wide web, information seeking, information retrieval, browsing, web browser, searching, finding, behavioral model, user behavior, log analysis, quantitative, qualitative

Cite As

Chun Wei Choo, Brian Detlor and Don Turnbull (2000) Information Seeking on the Web: An Integrated Model of Browsing and Searching. First Monday, volume 5, number 2 (February 2000).

Abstract

This paper presents findings from a study of how knowledge workers use the Web to seek external information as part of their daily work. Thirty-four users from seven companies took part in the study. Participants were mainly IT specialists, managers, and research/marketing/consulting staff working in organizations that included a large utility company, a major bank, and a consulting firm. Participants answered a detailed questionnaire and were interviewed individually in order to understand their information needs and information seeking preferences. A custom-developed WebTracker software application was installed on each of their work place PCs, and participants’ Web-use activities were then recorded continuously during two-week periods. The WebTracker recorded how participants used the browser to seek information on the Web: it logged menu choices, button bar selections, and keystroke actions, allowing browsing and searching sequences to be reconstructed. In a second round of personal interviews, participants recalled critical incidents of using information from the Web.

Data from the two interviews and the WebTracker logs constituted the database for analysis. Sixty-one significant episodes of information seeking were identified. A model was developed to describe the common repertoires of information seeking that were observed. On one axis of the model, episodes were plotted according to the four scanning modes identified by Aguilar (1967), Weick and Daft (1983): undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, informal search, and formal search. Each mode is characterized by its own information needs and information seeking strategies. On the other axis of the model, episodes were plotted according to the occurrence of one or more of the six categories of information seeking behaviors identified by Ellis (1989, 1990): starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. The study suggests that a behavioral framework that relates motivations (Aguilar) and moves (Ellis) may be helpful in analyzing patterns of Web-based information seeking.

Excerpt

Towards a Behavioral Model of Information Seeking on the Web

Aguilar’s modes of scanning and Ellis’ seeking behaviors may be combined and extended in a new behavioral model of information seeking on the Web. The figure below identifies four main modes of information seeking on the Web: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, informal search, and formal search. For each mode, the figure indicates which information seeking activities or moves are likely to occur frequently, as suggested by theory.

Figure 3: Behavioral Modes and Moves of Information Seeking on the Web

	Starting	Chaining	Browsing	Differentiating	Monitoring	Extracting
Undirected Viewing	Identifying, selecting, starting pages and sites	Following links on initial pages
Conditioned Viewing			Browsing entry pages, headings, site maps	Bookmarking, printing, copying; Going directly to known site	Revisiting ‘favorite’ or bookmarked sites for new information
Informal Search				Bookmarking, printing, copying; Going directly to known site	Revisiting ‘favorite’ or bookmarked sites for new information	Using (local) search engines to extract information
Formal Search					Revisiting ‘favorite’ or bookmarked sites for new information	Using search engines to extract information

Undirected Viewing

In the undirected viewing mode on the Web, we expect to see many instances of starting and chaining. Starting occurs when viewers begin their Web use on pre-selected default home pages, or when they visit a favorite page or site to begin their viewing (such as news, newspaper, or magazine sites). Chaining occurs when viewers notice items of interest (often by chance), and then follow hypertext links to more information on those items. Forward chaining of the sort just described is the most typical during undirected viewing. Backward chaining is also possible, since search engines can be used to locate other Web pages that point to the site that the user is currently at.

Conditioned Viewing

In the conditioned viewing mode on the Web, we expect browsing, differentiating, and monitoring to be common. Differentiating occurs as viewers select Web sites or pages that they expect to provide relevant information. Sites may be differentiated based on prior personal visits, or recommendations by others (such as word-of-mouth or published reviews). Differentiated sites are often bookmarked. When visiting differentiated sites, viewers browse the content by looking through tables of contents, site maps, or list of items and categories. Viewers may also monitor highly differentiated sites by returning regularly to browse, or by keeping abreast of new content (through, for example subscribing to newsletters that report new material on the site).

Informal Search

During informal search on the Web, we expect differentiating, extracting, and monitoring to be typical. Again, informal search is likely to be attempted at a small number of Web sites that have been differentiated by the individual, based on the individual’s knowledge about these sites’ information relevance, quality, affiliation, dependability, and so on. Extracting is relatively “informal” in the sense that searching would be localized to looking for information within the selected site(s). Extracting is also likely to make use of the basic, ‘simple’ search features or commands of the local search engine, in order to get at the most important or most recent information, without attempting to be comprehensive. Monitoring becomes more proactive if the individual sets up push channels or software agents that automatically find and deliver information based on keywords or subject headings.

Formal Search

During formal search on the Web, we expect primarily extracting operations, with some complementary monitoring activity. Formal search makes use of search engines that cover the Web relatively comprehensively, and that provide a powerful set of search features that can focus retrieval. Because the individual wishes not to miss any important information, there is a willingness to spend more time in the search, to learn and use complex search features, and to evaluate the sources that are found in terms of quality or accuracy. Formal search may be two-staged: multi-site searching that identifies significant sources is then followed by within-site searching. Within-site searching may involve fairly intensive foraging. Extracting may be supported by monitoring activity, again through services such as Web site alerts, push channels/agents, and e-mail announcements, in order to keep up with late-breaking information.

References in this publication

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• Chun Wei Choo, Brian Detlor, and Don Turnbull, 1998. “A Behavioral Model of Information Seeking on the Web: Preliminary Results of a Study of How Managers and IT Specialists Use the Web,” In: Proceedingsof 61st ASIS Annual Meeting held in Pittsburgh, Pa., edited by Cecilia M. Preston, volume 35, pp. 290-302. Medford, N.J.: Information Today.
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K. Andrew Edmonds, James Blustein and Don Turnbull

Keywords

information management, personal information management, pim, hypertext, wiki, personalization, information organization, blogging, computer-supported cooperative work

Cite As

K. Andrew Edmonds, James Blustein and Don Turnbull (2006). A Personal Information and Knowledge Infrastructure Integrator. Journal of Digital Information, 5(1).

Abstract

The Next Big Thing is being grown organically, cultivated by software developers and pruned by personal Weblog publishers. The rising Weblogging space of the Internet is looking more like traditional hypertext than the Web of the 1990s. The ways in which Weblogging has evolved beyond the previous limitations of the Web as hypertext, and the ways Weblogging is evolving towards common-use hypertext destined to play a critical role in everyday life, will be explored. We have a vision of a universal information management system built on extending the traditional hypertext framework. In our utopian future, everyone will use tools descended from today’s blogs to structure, search and share personal information, as well as to participate in shared discussion. We begin by expressing a vision of common-use hypertext for information management and interpersonal communication.

This vision is grounded in the rapid evolution of Weblogs and known issues in information systems and hypertext. The practical implications of who will use these systems, and how, is expanded as usage scenarios for Weblogs now and in the future. After recapping the current issues facing the Weblogging community, we look to the long-range implementation issues with optimism. Our system is forward-looking yet realistic. The activities the system will support are extrapolated from recent developments in the online community, and most of the sketches of implementation are based on current approaches. It is of more than passing interest that the features we extrapolate were all described by Nelson as early hypertext ideals. Of particular interest is that the features are now being implemented because of perceived immediate need by communities of interest.

Excerpt

Looking Ahead
An enriched personal history of interaction with any networked information, organized by time, location or activity will add much-needed context to ubiquitous computing and its potential for always-on history collection. This history will be available in the universal information manager for user controlled contributions to a spectrum of distributed access, from private to public and dynamic to archival. Already the practice of moblogging (i.e. the use of digital camera-equipped cell phones to take and share photographs taken anywhere [8]) is expanding the abilities of personal information collections. Moreover, this expansion of digital information collection leads to a multimedia-rich world of individual history, shareable with family, friends and others as permitted. Flexible recombinations of media will allow the easy assemblage of interlinked hypermedia scrapbooks in the PIKII: to catalog the interactions of subsets of people, places and activities enabled by automatically created metadata at the time of media creation, through subsequent interaction and by explicit tagging.

Systems that generate and use implicit tagging and information classification are also key elements of the PIKII. Just as Google uses popularity and relevance measures to sort and rank Web information, authoring tools will enable the use of information annotation in appropriate metadata dimensions to add information about a link or node of information. Such link type information might be, at its simplest, an affective score or a value along a more sophisticated dimension such as typing the rhetorical relationship. This information, when combined with personal history, information content, the interaction with a peer’s data (expressed in any number of ways from a blog post, shared access to personal information or popularity measures), will be key factors that help make information searching more personally relevant.
Beyond singular units of information, the PIKII will provide interfaces for mapping discussions distributed across the Internet and could be the catalyst for widescale adoption of link types in more traditional discussion systems. Affective components of link types may dominate the social aspects of Weblog communication due to simplicity in authoring and dynamic typing through the explicit and implicit methods previously noted. While transclusion and annotation have formed the basis for widespread adoption of hypertext for Weblog communication, the proposed link and node type additions, as well as more general metadata improvements, will facilitate the intertwingling of information, but with an intelligence to help manage attention and provenance

In many ways, this article aligns with a subset of the goals of the semantic Web space (Berners-Lee et al. 2001), which also promises utility for metadata-enriched information about everyday events. In an ideal world, service providers and vendors, software tools and agencies would offer information in standardized, metadata-enriched, machine readable formats suitable for semantic Web intentions. Many chores might be automated, as in the arrangement of health care for example.
Expanding from the semantic Web, a system of successful micropayment schemes may arise, whether they be karmic and barter schemes or involve actual funds transfer that may drive the received value of both preparing and accessing this semantically-enriched information. Information exchanges with knowledgeable experts and the distribution of favors through a Friend-of-a-Friend network may prove to be more valuable and more popular than micropayments. As we have seen, a key to the widespread adoption of Web information to date is the ability to connect openly with individuals and groups who share common interests, a trend that should continue.

This combination of personal, aggregate and networked contextualizing of information nodes and their linking methods has wide-ranging potential for many dimensions of personal knowledge management efforts. The critical need for personal information management and publishing is to bring the fluency that Weblogging software has created for publishing to the process of connecting and integrating information, leading to a storehouse of personal knowledge.

Conclusion
We have a vision of a universal information management system built on a hypertext framework. In our utopian future, everyone will use tools descended from today’s blogs to structure, search and share personal information as well as to participate in shared discussion. Just as Nelson (1990) envisioned a network where everything is deeply intertwingled, we propose that not only everything, but everyone can belong to several, possibly overlapping and discordant, intertwingled communities of interest. These communities will form dense networks of information linkage, allowing many types of structured and unstructured content to continually expand and weave even more interconnected webs of relationships.
People are motivated to communicate many aspects of their lives to many different audiences. The rapid growth of Weblogging has affirmed the appeal of hypertext and validated the notion of individuals as content producers. The availability of personal hypertext systems, with support for granular control over sharing nodes, will increase this adoption for both Weblog authors and readers.
The growth in the amount of digitally captured and hypertextualized information in the coming years will be even more astounding than the growth of the Web over the past ten years. There are significant technical challenges to overcome, but the standards-based organic growth of Weblogs and the Internet shows methods by which these challenges might be overcome. Rejecting the Web as not-hypertext is missing the point. The Web is an incubator for a continuously evolving system of content, user interests and supporting technologies.

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Andrew Dillon and Don Turnbull

Keywords

information architecture, web design, world-wide web, interaction design, user experience, information design

Cite As

Andrew Dillon & Don Turnbull (2006). Information Architecture. Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 2006 Edition. Taylor & Francis.

Introduction

Information architecture has become one of the latest areas of excitement within the library and information science (LIS) community, largely resulting from the recognition it garners from those outside of the field for the methods and practices of information design and management long seen as core to information science.

The term, information architecture (IA), was coined by Richard Wurman in 1975 to describe the need to transform data into meaningful information for people to use, a not entirely original idea, but cer- tainly a first-time conjunction of the terms into the now common IA label. Building on concepts in archi- tecture, information design, typography, and graphic design, Wurman’s vision of a new field lay dormant for the most part until the emergence of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, when interest in information organization and structures became widespread. The term came into vogue among the broad web design community as a result of the need to find a way of communicating shared interests in the underlying organization of digitally accessed information.

Excerpt

Research Issues in IA

Pure research in IA is rare, the field borrowing more from outside as needed than tackling research ques- tions directly. However, as the process of IA has become structured and recognized, dedicated research for IA is beginning to take form, driven largely by practitioners seeking answers to design questions.
The major theme in IA research is the study of navigation and how people find what they are looking for in an information space. From concerns with labeling and menu structures to the development of models of navigation behavior there are now significant research publications dealing with topics of direct relevance to IA.[10,11] True, most of this work is still borrowed from outside, but this is subject to change as more academic researchers become involved in the field.

There is also significant work that extends examina- tions of navigation into areas such as the perception of information shape or the emergence of web genres and their exploitation for design.[7,12] This research aims to uncover the interaction between various structural forms of information space and the user, employing a socio-cognitive based analytical approach to explain- ing and predicting use.

Another central theme for IA research is search behavior and the underlying design of efficient search mechanisms. Again, this research not only draws on the history of such work for information retrieval but also contains new contributions dealing with faceted metadata and image databases.[13–15]

Indeed, it is difficult to bound work exclusively as the province of IA because concerns with organization of information and user search and navigation of information spaces have such a long history. It is likely that for the foreseeable future, IA will remain a net borrower of intellectual research from other disciplines until such time as dedicated venues for IA research publications emerge. That said, the need to understand how best to design and implement IAs will remain an important driver of research work.

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Don Turnbull

Abstract

This paper describes possible approaches of data collection and analysis methods that can be used to understand Web use via logging. First, a method devised by Choo, Detlor, & Turnbull (1998, 1999 & 2000) that can be used to offer a comprehensive, empirical foundation for understanding Web logs in context by gaining insight into Web use from three diverse sources: an initial survey questionnaire, usage logs gathered with a custom-developed Web tracking application and follow-up interviews with study participants. Second, a method of validating different types of Web use logs is proposed that involves client browser trace logs, intranet server and firewall or proxy logs. Third and finally, a system is proposed to collected and analyze Web use via proxy logs that classify Web pages by content.

Excerpt

It is often thought that in some configurations, client browsing application local caching settings may influence server-based logging accuracy. If it is not efficient to modify each study participant’s browser settings (or that temporarily modifying participants browser settings for the study period affects true Web use) a method of factoring in what may be lost due to local cache may be applied. … By tuning intranet server logging settings and collecting and analyzing these logs, some initial measurement of the differences that client browser caching makes in accurate firewall logs can be made. Comparisons to access on the organizations intranet Web server logs such as total page requests per page, time to load, use of REST or AJAX interaction and consistent user identification can be made to the more raw logging from the firewall logs collected

Update

What’s novel about this paper is the introduction of using different datasets to validate or triangulate the veracity and accuracy of log data. Often, logs are collected and processed without context to explain subtle interaction patterns, especially in relation to user behavior. By coordinating a set of quantitative resources, often with accompanying qualitative data, a much richer view of Web use is achieved. This is worth remembering when relying on Web Analytics tools to form a picture of a Web site’s use or set of Web user interactions: you need to go beyond the basic statistical measures (often far beyond what typical log analysis software provides, certainly by their default reports) and design new analysis techniques to gain understanding.

Keywords

browser history, firewall logs, intranet server logs, web use, survey, questionnaire, client application, webtracker, interview, methodology, logs, server logs, proxy, firewall, analytics, content classification, client trace, transaction log analysis, www

Cite As

Turnbull, D. (2006). Methodologies for Understanding Web Use with Logging in Context. Paper presented at the The 15th International World Wide Web Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland.

References in this publication

• Auster, E., & Choo, C. W. (1993). Environmental scanning by CEOs in two Canadian industries. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 44(4), 194-203.
• Catledge, L. D., & Pitkow, J. E. (1995). Characterizing Browsing Strategies in the World-Wide Web. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 27, 1065-1073.
• Choo, C.W., Detlor, B. & Turnbull, D. (1998). A Behavioral Model of Information Seeking on the Web — Preliminary Results of a Study of How Managers and IT Specialists Use the Web. Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society of Information Science, 290-302.
• Choo, C.W., Detlor, B. & Turnbull, D. (1999). Information Seeking on the Web – An Integrated Model of Browsing and Searching. Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Information Science, Washington, D.C.
• Choo, C.W., Detlor, B. & Turnbull, D. (2000). Web Work: Information Seeking and Knowledge Work on the World Wide Web. Dordrecht, The Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
• Cuhna, C.R., Bestavros, A. & Crovella, M.E. (1995). Characteristics of WWW Client-Based Traces. Technical Report #1995-010. Boston University, Boston MA.
• Flanagan, J. C. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological Bulletin 51(4), 327-358.
• Jansen, B. J., Spink, A. & Saracevic, T. (2000) Real life, real users, and real needs: a study and analysis of user queries on the Web. Information Processing & Management, Volume 36, Issue 2, pp 207-227.
• Jansen, B. J. (2005) Evaluating Success in Search Systems. Proceedings of the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. Charlotte, North Carolina. 28 October – 2 November.
• Kehoe, C., Pitkow, J. & Rogers, J. (1998). GVU’s Ninth WWW User Survey Report. http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04.
• Pitkow, J. and Recker, M. (1994). Results from the first World-Wide Web survey. Special issue of Journal of Computer Networks and ISDN systems, 27, 2.
• Pitkow, J. (1997, April 7-11). In Search of Reliable Usage Data on the WWW. Sixth International World Wide Web Conference Proceedings, Santa Clara, CA.
• Rousskov, A. & Soloviev, V. (1999) A performance study of the Squid proxy on HTTP/1.0. World Wide Web., 2, 1-2, pp 47 – 67.

Publications that cite this publication

• Rivolli, A., Marinho, D. & Pansanato, L. (2008).Uma abordagem para o rastreamento da interaçao do usuário com aplicações interativas web. Proceedings of the 14th Brazilian Symposium on Multimedia and the Web table of contents. Vila Velha, Brazil, pp 28-35.
  

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Jansen, B.J. and Ramadoss, R. and Zhang, M. and Zang, N. (2006). Wrapper: An application for evaluating exploratory searching outside of the lab. EESS, p 14.

[PDF]

Don Turnbull

Abstract

The OpenChoice system, currently in development, is an open source, open access community rating and filtering service that would improve upon the utility of currently available Web content filters. The goal of OpenChoice is to encourage community involvement in making filtering classification more accurate and to increase awareness in the current approaches to content filtering. The design challenge for OpenChoice is to find the best interfaces for encouraging easy participation amongst a community of users, be it for voting, rating or discussing Web page content. This work in progress reviews some initial designs while reviewing best practices and designs from popular Web portals and community sites.

Excerpt

…Tim O’Reilly proposed the phrase “architecture of participation” to describe participatory Web sites and applications that encourage user-driven content, open source contribution models and simple access via APIs. So why are so many of these sites and applications under-designed at the interface and interaction level, not to mention having vaguely architected overall structure? Many of these sites are relying on the (initial) enthusiasm of users or their compelling features to keep and encourage participation. However more attractive and functional interfaces with clear labels, (usability) tested interfaces, finely crafted workflows and consistent interaction models would both keep early adopters involved and allow for easy bootstrapping for late-comers. When designing participatory, community-oriented sites, designers shouldn’t have to re-invent everything from scratch.

…popular community sites feature common interface elements and functionality:

• Overall voting and rank status easy to read
• Dynamically updated interaction
• Thumbnail, abstract or actual content of item on same page as voting interface
• Rating information for community at large for the item
• Suggestions or lists for additional items to rate
• Textual description of (proposed) item category with link to category
• Links to related and relevant discussions about item (or item category)
• Standard interface objects (where appropriate) to leverage existing Web interaction (e.g. purple & blue links colors, tabbed navigation metaphor, drop-down lists)
• Show history of ratings or queue of items to vote on
• Aggregate main page or display element that shows overall community ratings (to encourage virtuous competition for most ratings)
• Task flow for voting or rating clear with additional interactions not required (e.g. following links)

…In addition to dynamic voting status, there is some consideration of simplifying the voting to include “allow” vs. “block” ratings only. Design issues such as the colors of the buttons may also overly influence certain votes.

As part of each user’s own customized portal page, a history of recent votes is prototyped to give users the ability to remember their past votes and see the status of pending items in consideration.

Keywords

information interfaces: Graphical User Interfaces, user interfaces, reputation systems, social computing

Cite As

Turnbull, D. (2007). Rating, Voting & Ranking: Designing for Collaboration & Consensus. Paper presented at the Association of Computing Machinery Computer Human Interface Conference (SIGCHI), San Jose, CA.

References in this publication

• Goldstein, A. (2002). Like a sieve: The Child Internet Protection Act and ineffective filters in libraries. Fordham Intellectual Property, Media, and Entertainment Law Journal, 12, 1187.1202.
• Kaiser Family Foundation. (2002). See no evil: How Internet filters affect the search for online health information. http://www.kff.org (10/25/2004)
• http://www.youtube.com
• http://www.digg.com
• http://www.imdb.com
• http://www.netflix.com
• Howard Rheingold, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, Perseus Publishing, 2002
  

Publications that cite this publication

• Galway, D. (2008) Real-life Rating Algorithm [PDF].

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Recommended Reading

Building Web Reputation Systems by Randy Farmer and Bryce Glass at Building Web Reputation Systems: The Blog.

[PDF]

James Pitkow, Hinrich Schuetze, Todd A. Cass, Rob Cooley, Don Turnbull, Andy Edmonds, Eytan Adar, et al.

Abstract

A contextual computing approach may prove a breakthrough in personalized search efficiency.

Excerpt

Don Turnbull and Laura F. Bright

Abstract

An exploratory study conducted in late autumn and early winter 2006-2007 investigates the purchasing of sponsored search advertising for a major US university’s academic department. The ad campaign used Google’s AdWord service with the goal of increasing awareness of the academic department and encouraging potential graduate admissions or admissions inquiries. A behavioral model of information seeking is suggested that could be applied for selecting appropriate types of online advertising for awareness and other advertising goals. The study found little overlap between traditional, commerce-oriented online advertising methods and a general awareness campaign, as evidenced by a low click-through rate to the targeted site. Insights for future studies include increased integration with server logs, targeted site query terms and alternative awareness strategies.

Keywords

sponsored search; online advertising; search engines; behavioral model; information seeking; electronic business; Google.

Cite As

Turnbull, D. and Bright, L.F. (2008) Advertising academia with sponsored search: an exploratory study examining the effectiveness of Google AdWords at the local and global level, Int. J. Electronic Business, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp.149-171.

References in this publication

• Ad Age Search Marketing Fact Pack (2006) Published by eMarketer on 6th November, Retrieved online on 01/19/07.
• Allen, T.J. (1977) Information needs and uses, Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 4, pp.3-29.
• Chang, S. and Rice, R. (1993) Browsing: a multidimensional framework, Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 23, p.242.
• Cho, C. (2003) Factors influencing the clicking of banner ads on the World Wide Web, Cyberpsychology and Behavior, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp.201-215.
• Cho, C–H. and Cheon, H.J. (2004) Why do people avoid advertising on the internet?, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp.89-97.
• Choo, C.W., Detlor, B. and Turnbull, D. (1998) A behavioral model of information seeking on the web – preliminary results of a study of how managers and IT specialists use the web, Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society of Information Science, Published for the American Society for Information Science by Information Today Inc., Pittsburgh, PA.
• Choo, C.W., Detlor, B. and Turnbull, D. (2000a) Web Work: Information Seeking and Knowledge Work on the World Wide Web, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands.

• Choo, C.W., Detlor, B. and Turnbull, D. (2000b) Working the web: an empirical model of web use, 33rd Hawaii International Conference on System Science (HICSS), Maui, HI.
• Coulter, R.A., Zaltman, G. and Coulter, K.S. (2001) Interpreting consumer perceptions of advertising: an application of the Zaltman metaphor elicitation technique, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp.1-21.
• Coyle, J.R. and Thorson, E. (2001) The effects of progressive levels of interactivity and vividness in web marketing sites, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp.277-289.
• Ellis, D. and Cox, D. (1993) A comparison of the information seeking patterns of research scientists in an industrial environment, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp.356-369.
• Ellis, D. (1989) A behavioural approach to information retrieval systems design, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 45, No. 3, pp.171-212.
• Ellis, D. (1997) Modelling the information seeking patterns of engineers and research scientists in an industrial environment, Journal of Documentation, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp.384-403.
• Fain, D.C. and Pederson, J.O. (2006) Sponsored search: a brief history, American Society for Information Science and Technology Bulletin, Retrieved on 11/15/06 from http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Dec-05/pedersen.html, January, Special Issue.
• Feng, J., Bhargava, H.K. and Pennock, D.M. (2005) Implementing sponsored search in web search engines: computational evaluation of alternative mechanisms, Journal of Computing, Vol. 19, No. 1, Winter 2007, pp.137-148.
• Friestad, M. and Wright, P. (1994) The persuasion knowledge model: how people cope with persuasion attempts, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 21, pp.1-31.
• Godin, S. (1999) Permission Marketing, Simon and Schuster, New York. Goral, T. (2003) Intelligent admission, University Business, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp.38-41. Holahan, C. (2006) Click Fraud: Google Comes Clean, Sort Of, BusinessWeek, 27 July. Jansen, B.J. (2007) Click fraud, IEEE Computer, Vol. 40, No. 7, pp.85-86.
• Jansen, B.J. and Resnick, M. (2006) An examination of searchers perceptions of non-sponsored and sponsored links during e-commerce web searching, Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, Vol. 57, pp.1949-1961.
• Li, H., Edwards, S. and Lee, J-H. (2002) Measuring the intrusiveness of advertisements: scale development and validaton, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp.37-47.
• Marchionini, G. (1995) Information Seeking in Electronic Environments, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Moore, R.S., Stammerjohan, C.A. and Coulter, R.A. (2005) Banner advertiser-website context congruity and color effects on attention and attitudes, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp.71-84.
• Shamdasani, P.N., Stanaland, A.J.S. and Tan, J. (2001) Location, location, location: insights for advertising placement on the web, Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp.7-21.
• Stone, B. (2007) Dont like dancing cowboys? Results say you do, New York Times, Media and Advertising Section, 18th January.
• Sutton, S.A. (1994) The role of attorney mental models of law in case relevance determinations: an exploratory analysis, Journal of the American Society of Information Science, Vol. 45, No. 3, pp.186-200.
• Taylor, R.S. (1986) Value Added Processes in Information Systems, Ablex Publishing Corp., Norwood, NJ.
• Xing, B. and Lin, Z. (2004) The impact of search engine optimization on online advertising market, ACM Conference Proceedings, Winter, pp.519-530.

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The first talk is a set of ideas related to the work I’ve been doing recently, building data structures, crafting algorithms and designing user experiences that are powered by quantitative data.

Quantitative Information Architecture – Don Turnbull, Ph.D.

10:30 – 11:15AM on Saturday, April 10 in Ellis

Why quantitative information architecture? Why now?

You don’t have to be RainMan or Stephen Hawking to use numbers to get things
done. Quantitative methods are applicable for IA thinking be it for hypothesis
generation, instrumentation, data collection and analysis of information at
scales never before possible with insights that are comparable over time,
generalizable and extensible.

Quantitative skills can allow IAs to interpret and analyze others’ designs and
research more readily, as well as combine methods and models for meta-analysis
to help IAs move from description to prediction in designing and developing
future interfaces and architectures.

This presentation will review why you should use quantitative methods and
discuss both foundational and emerging ideas that are applicable for content
analysis, behavioral modeling, social media usage, informetrics and other
IA-related issues.

The twitter hashtag for this talk is #quantia. Feel free to send me questions directly via twitter/donturn too.

Quantiative Information Architecture slide deck from the 2010 IA Summit

Strauss Center :: Science 2.0: Globalized Innovation in Electronics by Dan Hutcheson, CEO, VLSI Research

Dan Hutcheson, of VLSI Research, Inc., is a recognized authority and well-known visionary for the semiconductor industry. He advises companies in strategic and tactical marketing, business management and manufacturing trends, productivity and strategy. Mr. Hutcheson developed the industry’s first cost-of-ownership model and the first factory cost-optimization model in the 1980s.

This presentation is part of the Strauss Center’s Technology, Innovation and Global Security Speaker Series, which brings world-renowned experts to campus to discuss how to sustain innovation and better utilize modern technology to benefit an increasingly global economic and social system.

This is the abstract for the talk:

This talk reviews an exploratory study of sponsored search advertising for a major US university’s academic department. The ad campaign used Google’s AdWord service with the goal of increasing awareness – not eCommerce – as part of the search process.  A behavioral model of information seeking is suggested that could be applied for selecting appropriate types of online advertising for awareness and other advertising goals. Insights into the study methodology will also be discussed including the use of increased integration with server logs, targeted site query terms and alternative awareness strategies. 

The talk is part of the panel AM08 2008 – The Google Online Marketing Challenge: A Multi-disciplinary Global Teaching and Learning Initiative Using Sponsored Search with Bernard Jansen, Mark A. Rosso, Dan Russell, Brian Detlor and Don Turnbull.

This is a summary of the panel:

Sponsored search is an innovative information searching paradigm. This panel will discuss a vehicle to explore this unique medium as an educational opportunity for students and professors. From February to May 2008, Google will run its first ever student competition in sponsored search, The Google Online Marketing Challenge http://www.google.com/onlinechallenge/. Similar to other Google initiatives, the extent seems huge. Based on pre-registrations, more than two hundred professors and nearly nine thousand students from approximately 50 countries will compete. This may be the largest, worldwide educational course ever done. It is certainly on a large scale.

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is a real-life, problem-based, and multidisciplinary educational endeavor of the kind that many educators say is needed to relate teaching to outside the classroom. However, such endeavors are not without risks. The session should appeal to professors that competed in the 2008 Challenge, any professors considering the 2009 Challenge, as well as other educators who might consider the inclusion of Google AdWords as a pedagogical tool in their curricula. The panel will also be of great interest to those information professionals and educators as a possible model for use in other domains besides sponsored search.

This course surveys Knowledge Management systems that enable the access and coordination of knowledge assets. Technologies reviewed will include intranets, groupware, weblogs, instant messaging, content management systems and email in both individual and organizational contexts. Students will use these KM technologies, review case studies, research methods of knowledge organization and analyze and design KM processes and systems.

The course is chock full of fun topics including:

• Knowledge Management
• Collaborative Work
• Email
• Personal Information Management
• Personal Knowledge Management (if there is such a thing)
• Intranets, Portals and Organizational Knowledge
• Networked, Dynamic Collaboration
• Collaborative Filtering & Recommender Systems
• WiFi, UbiComp & Smart Mobs

Of course, we have a class blog too: Knowledge Management Systems @UTexas

This course approaches understanding Semantic Web technologies from three perspectives:

• Top-down, theoretical approaches to organizing semantic information including ontologies, taxonomies, knowledge representation and software agents.
• Bottom-up approaches, sometimes called “emergent semantics” or “the lower case ‘S’ semantic web”, for understanding and creating networked information including XML-based solutions including RDF, XPath and RSS. Also included are smaller, informal systems for organizing Web information including tagging (social bookmarking), microformats and other specific markup and distribution systems.
• Application approaches focusing on Web Services or “Web 2.0″ functionality including distributed (client and server) application design, syndication, Application Programming Interfaces, remote databases and “mash-ups”.

Of course, we have a class blog too: Semantic Web Technologies Blog.

The Information Architecture Institute (IAI) will award two USD $1,000 Progress Grants for 2007. The purpose of the program is twofold:

• to encourage researchers and practitioners to investigate IA-specific issues
• to publicize useful work that furthers the information architecture body of knowledge

Applications should propose work that will forward the theory and practice of information architecture. This can include original research, a synthesis of important existing research, or the development of an innovative new technique.

The IAI Progress Grant Committee will review the proposals and select those with the highest potential to benefit the information architecture field. Half of the grant amount will be awarded when the grant recipients are announced and half when the work is completed. Progress grants will only be awarded to proposals of sufficient quality, clarity, and originality.

Work supported through this program will be published on the iainstitute.org website, but it should have relevance beyond the Tools and Library collections. For instance, the work could inform future IAI workshop curricula, tie in with potential Institute publishing projects, be responsive to issues raised by members in the email discussion list, or support other Institute activities, such as Local Groups and International initiatives.

The application deadline for applying is October 15, 2007

Applications should be 2,000 words or fewer and must contain:

• Description of the problem or hypothesis
• Methodology to be used
• Explanation of how the resulting work will forward the theory or practice of IA
• Conditions under which others can use the results (e.g. Creative Commons license)

(Note that I’m on the Awards Jury Committee for this grant.)

Learn more about the Information Architecture 2007 Progress Grants now.

People are now using the World Wide Web (Web) to seek, gather, and share information in increasingly complex ways. In order to develop the next generation of Web information systems, we must have an understanding of people’s goals, their context, and their situational aspects. These aspects are difficult, if not impossible, to investigate in laboratory settings. Therefore, researchers must turn to naturalistic studies involving large number of users who may be separated geographically. In these settings, many researchers require logs of user behaviour on the Web to study the interactions of Web users, both with respect to general behaviour and in order to develop and evaluate new tools and techniques. Traces of Web activity are used for a wide variety of research and commercial purposes including user interface usability and evaluations of user behaviour and patterns on the Web. Unfortunately, current tools and processes do not support consistent and detailed studies using logs of user behaviour. As such, there is a duplication of effort, which hampers progress in the field.

This special issue is inspired by the Logging Traces of Web Activity: The Mechanics of Data Collection workshop at the WWW 2006 Conference this May in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Relevant research themes include, but are not limited to:

• Methodologies for data collection (client-side, server-side, proxy-based)
• Collection of browser data (e.g. events, bookmarks, history, and caches)
• Collection of data from users across different browsers
• AJAX-compatible logging systems
• Using mixed data sources for data validation
• Cleaning Web data
• Web data warehousing
• Using Web data for proactive user functionality
• Methods for matching user behaviour to task models
• Qualitative annotation of Web data

Submissions

Submissions should be full length articles. All submissions will be peer reviewed and should describe original research that is not under consideration in any other forum. Please follow the formatting guidelines of the journal. Submissions should be emailed to melanie@cs.dal.ca in PDF format. All questions regarding submissions should be directed to Melanie Kellar (melanie@cs.dal.ca).

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: January 8, 2007
Reviews Due: February 8, 2007
Notification to Authors: February 19, 2007
Final Papers Due: March 19, 2007

I have already been in town a day and half. I’ve been enjoying the nice weather (no, that’s not a Seattle rain joke) and the downtown area. Yesterday I hit Dilettante Chocolates and walked down to the Pike Place Market for some fresh crab cocktail and hot french bread (a tasty sandwich indeed) at the waterfront park. Then a trip over to the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project (museum) and ran smack dab into a Star Trek convention (no, that’s not a Seattle geek joke). Then somehow I ended up at REI, which seems inevitable here in town (yes, that is a Seattle treehugger joke).

Later in the week, I’m driving down to Portland and will plan on at least one Lewis & Clark related stop, but am open to any road trip recommendations or must-sees in Portland. (I’ve never been to Oregon and I’m happy to correct that error. Also, that’s one more state I can say I’ve been to.)

1. to encourage researchers and practitioners to investigate IA-specific
   issues
2. to publicize useful work that furthers the information architecture
   body of knowledge.

IAI Progress Grant pplications should propose work that will forward the theory and practice of information architecture. This can include original research, a synthesis
of important existing research, or the development of an innovative new
technique.

The format of the applications should be 2,000 words or fewer and must contain:

• Description of the problem or hypothesis
• Methodology to be used
• Explanation of how the resulting work will forward the theory or
  practice of IA
• Conditions under which others can use the results (e.g. Creative
  Commons license)

The grant application deadline is September 15th, 2006.

Please see 2006 IA Progress Grants information page, including information on last year’s winners.

This year, I am a member of the awards jury for the grant, for even more information, see the details for the progress grant.

All of the papers, presentations and statements of interest provided a number of insight into different methods for collecting data about Web use including using both server and client based tools including the issues faced when trying to decide what to log about users’ interactions and what the log formats should look like too. A number of revealing studies also reviewed some current views of how Web users do interact with the Web as well as a number of applications, plug-ins and scripting methods for getting data, distributing it and what users’ perceptions of their data might mean to them.

We were just one of the many excellent workshops at WWW2006.

The entire day went well thanks to my excellent co-organizers for the panel: Kirstie Hawkey, Melanie Kellar, and Andy Edmonds.

Fortunately, before the conference I will be doing some touring throughout Scotland including Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. If you have some recommendations, on “must see” experiences, I’m happy to hear about it. I’ve already added a few events to my trip from excellent suggestions including the Isle of Skye and a whisky distillery or two. Feel free to comment on this post or send me an email.

Take a look and tell me what you like or what I’ve missed.

I think this is a good set of tags, especially the huge list of band names and their tags even if I don’t know and never will know all but a few of the bands that are possible to see during the music part of SXSW. I suspect it is possible that if I actually did learn of the band via the tags, I’d be more likely to still remember them by their tag instead of their complete name. I wonder what that says about the primacy in learned vocabularies. What I do like is that many of the tags I clicked on already have more than a few links to the band’s own Web sites, fan sites and even some (hopefully legal) downloads. That seems to be a great way to bootstrap both getting people to use the offered tags and also to discover some new bands to go and see while they’re here in Austin.

In terms of (ha!) what I call “tag grammar” it is also interesting to debate the use of date information like “2006″ or “06″ on the end of the main sxsw conference tags as in sxsw2006 vs. sxsw . Thankfully, the year as part of a tag might not be supremely important as most tagging systems show links with the newest first, making it pretty easy to see all the tagged items from the current year first. (Note to all tagging system UI designers – how about some real time sorting options for tags lists and tag clouds? Sorting by date, type and kind could truly transform tagging from a backstop for retrieval to something more essential to the overall information seeking process.) The good thing to help achieve some consensus is that on most pages (within shadows.com at least) you can see related tags or drill down into combinations of tags (a “narrow results” option).

Since my all-time favorite O’Reilly book is Mastering Regular Expressions, this has got to be my kind of conference.

Now why not a program for academic research access to the data stores?

We invite position papers for the WWW 2006 workshop “Logging Traces of Web Activity: The Mechanics of Data Collection”. Many WWW researchers require logs of user behaviour on the Web. Researchers study the interactions of web users, both with respect to general behaviour and in order to develop and evaluate new tools and techniques.

Traces of web activity are used for a wide variety of research and commercial purposes including user interface usability and evaluations of user behaviour and patterns on the web. Currently, there is a lack of available logging tools to assist researchers with data collection and it can be difficult to choose an appropriate technique. There are several tradeoffs associated with different methods of capturing log-based data. There are also challenges associated with processing, analyzing and utilizing the collected data.

This one day workshop will examine the trade-offs and challenges inherent to the different logging approaches and provide workshop attendees the opportunity to discuss both previous data collection experiences and upcoming challenges. The goal of this workshop is to establish a community of researchers and practitioners to contribute to a shared repository of logging knowledge and tools. The workshop will consist of a panel discussion, participant presentations, demonstrations of logging tools and prototypes, and a discussion of the next steps for the group. Participation is open to researchers, practitioners, and students in the field.

The deadline for workshop proposals is January 10, 2006. I hope to see you there.

• Maureen L. Mackenzie
• Bill Edgar
• Brian Detlor

about Knowledge Management Practices in Organizations Undergoing Fundamental Change at the American Society of Information Science & Technology’s Annual Meeting.

Here is the requisite blurb about the panel:

This session combines individual presentations with a group discussion. The focus of this session and the expertise of this panel bring together the information-related issues of organizational change, managing knowledge, enabling technology and the role of senior management. This session reflects the interests of SIG-MGT membership and aligns with the ASIST 2005 theme of “Bringing Research and Practice Together.”

Of course, there is a Wiki page too.

From the blurb:

This unique book presents authoritative overviews of more than 70 conceptual frameworks for understanding how people seek, manage, share, and use information in different contexts. A practical and readable reference to both wellestablished and newly proposed theories of information behavior, the book includes contributions from 85 scholars from 10 countries. Each theory description covers origins, propositions, methodological implications, usage, links to related conceptual frameworks, and listings of authoritative primary and secondary references. The introductory chapters explain key concepts, theory, method connections, and the process of theory development.

Check out the Table of Contents (pdf file). (I’m the last chapter in the book, it’s funny that the chapters are organized alphabetically by the title of each chapter.)

Amazon.com link to Theories of Information Behavior. American Society for Information Science & Technology Member Price is 20% off now.

SIGIR is one of the best academic conferences to keep up with what’s new and what’s possible for Web search and increasingly, in Desktop search and mobile device search. For 2006 I expect we will see more about vertical search and even blog search too as well as some new insights into user behavior for IR.

I will be a reviewer again this year in the Browsers and User Interface track, where there are usually a number of amazing systems and interfaces. Here’s some text describing the track:

The Browsers and User Interfaces track at WWW’2006 focuses on promoting novel research directions and providing a forum where researchers, theoreticians, and practitioners can introduce new approaches, paradigms, applications, share their knowledge and opinions about problems and solutions related to accessing and interacting with data , services, and other humans over the Web. We invite original papers describing both theoretical and experimental research including (but not limited to) the following topics:

Hope to see you there.

It’s a survey of the various characteristics and methods of studying people’s information behavior. Of course, my chapter focuses on Web-based information use behavior with a quantitative spin.

Trivia note: originally Zipf’s work was based on some ideas from Condon (which GKZ acknowledged), way back in 1928, but Zipf’s name won out over time.