Factors and Evaluation of Refinding Behaviors

In this paper we describe difficulties involved in studying PIM behaviors and factors that can affect how people approach the refinding process. Factors that have been studied in the context of information seeking behaviors are summarized and their application to PIM and refinding are discussed. Finally, we note the importance of task in evaluating information refinding and reuse behaviors and discuss several task taxonomies that have been proposed that have applicability to the evaluation of PIM. INTRODUCTION Increasingly, organizing and managing electronic information is a problem for many computer users. Several recent research efforts are focusing on understanding not just how people search for and save information when seeking it the first time, but also on how they subsequently try to refind and reuse the information. Many aspects of PIM involve users refinding information that has been seen before. Research from the information science and information retrieval communities has examined information seeking and searching behaviors, but refinding behaviors have been examined less. In this position paper, three aspects of the study of PIM are discussed. First, we describe reasons that PIM and refinding are difficult to study. Second, we outline important factors that may affect how people approach PIM and information refinding. We discuss previous research – much from the information science community – on the effects of these factors on information seeking behaviors and relate these to the study of refinding and PIM. Finally, we discuss the importance of task in evaluation and summarize several taxonomies of tasks that may be useful in the study of PIM and information refinding. REFINDING IS DIFFICULT TO STUDY Refinding can be difficult to study. For example, the nature of refinding requires that a person: 1) has found some information, and 2) has a need or motivation to relocate this previously found information. Refinding is often motivated by unpredictable, external events. In addition, the process of finding information is often opportunistic and can evolve over time. These aspects make it difficult to observe refinding episodes as they occur and difficult to recreate in a laboratory setting. Interview and diary studies have been adapted and applied to study the unpredictable nature PIM and refinding by asking users to recall recent events (see [17] for an example of a modified diary technique). Studies of data logs (such as the Web logs studied in [16]) have been used to explore aggregate web behaviors, but logs often do not provide the rich insights and details from direct observation or interviews. Studying refinding in a laboratory setting has the benefit of being able to better control external factors and to isolate factors of interest. However, laboratory studies can lose important aspects of real-world activity and care must be taken to insure ecological validity. Across the research community, a combination of study approaches are needed to gain a full understanding of refinding tasks, user needs, and behaviors. FACTORS THAT AFFECT REFINDING Many factors play a role in how people find (i.e. search for) information. Studies from information retrieval, information science, cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and digital libraries communities have explored effects based on task type and task domain, individual differences, searcher experience, searcher familiarity with the topic of the search, and interface/system differences. Information refinding is a fairly new area of study, with little prior research that has focused directly on the factors that affect it, the strategies that people use, and the differences between finding and refinding. In this section, several factors that have been studied in the context of information finding are reviewed and their relation to refinding is discussed. Personal Information Management A SIGIR 2006 Workshop