Discovery Process on the WWW: Analysis Based on a Theory of Scientific Discovery

We investigated cognitive processes of seeking information on the WWW and the effects of subjects’ knowledge and experience on their processes and performance through the protocol analysis. We analyzed the protocol data on the basis of the two space model of scientific discovery. The information seeking process on the WWW was considered as a process of searching two kinds of problem spaces: the keyword space and the web space. The experimental results showed that (1) due to the effects of knowledge and experience, the experts’ performance of finding a target was higher than that of the novices, (2) when searching each space, the experts searched each space in detail but the novices did not, and (3) when shifting from one space to the other, the experts searched the two spaces alternately, but the novices tended to cling to a search of one of the two spaces.