Designing Consumer Health Information Systems: What Do User-Generated Questions Tell Us?

Searching for health information has become a prevalent activity on the web. The information found online has a significant impact on people’s decisions on whether to seek medical care and what treatments to undergo. However, existing studies consistently suggest that general consumers have various difficulties in formulating search queries using existing search engines and the queries were often not effective in retrieving personaland situationalrelevant information. Understanding users’ information needs is a gateway to designing effective information retrieval (IR) systems. In this study, we examined the types of information requested by users, the characteristics of consumers’ expressions of their information needs, and their expectations for results by analyzing the questions that general users posted on Yahoo! Answers, a popular social Q&A site. Based on the results, we proposed design recommendations for facilitating users’ ability to articulate their health information needs and recommendations for the presentation of information in health-related IR systems.