Esi 2007

This preliminary study investigates how participants make sense of search results, web-pages and documents when they use web-based environments. From a sensemaking perspective, it bridges across previous information seeking studies, which focused on specific aspects of information interaction such as search or information relevance judgments. This study corroborates some of those previous observations and extends them, by distinguishing different phases within participant’s evaluation of information sources and identifying relationships between them. Five categories of Information Interactions emerged: the results are selectively summarised and discussed with reference to the literature and within the context of ‘making sense’. Finally, the paper considers the implications for interaction design and exploratory search. INTRODUCTION The goals of this preliminary study were to gain insight into the range of strategies that individuals might employ in their search activities in order to select, interpret and integrate information, gathered from the Web in the context of their research-related tasks, i.e. to gain insight into how they ‘make sense’ of the information seeking process, and the implications for interaction design. As such, the study was interested in the interactions between the end-user and the information sources (e.g. search results and webpages/documents), and looked across different aspects of the sensemaking process: • deciding which sources to use; • collecting, extracting and organising relevant information from the sources; • forming external representations, both of the collection and of the meaning being derived from it. One of the early Information Seeking Models is Kuhlthau’s Information Seeking Process (ISP) model [10]. This captured the user’s constructive approach to ‘finding meaning through encountering information over a space of time’. Thus, Kuhlthau considered information seeking as a sensemaking process, i.e. where the individual is actively interpreting and constructing their own meaning to fit in with what they already know. Kuhlthau’s influence is seen in more recent models, including Choo’s Human Information Seeking: An Integrated Model [3] and Ingwersen’s Cognitive Framework of (longitudinal) IS&R [8]. Several recent empirical studies are also relevant to this project, in as much as they have informed this study’s aims, design etc., i.e. each addresses one or more aspects of the search process, although none actually span the range of strategies being investigated here. Findings from this study corroborate some of the existing literature, but also provide further insight by distinguishing different phases within participant’s evaluation of information sources and identifying relationships between them. To date, no studies have been found that focus on information gathering, i.e. search/selection, and external representation strategies and their relationship. Indeed this research appears to address a call to investigate how information seeking and sensemaking construction interact [12]. RESULTS FROM THE EMPIRICAL STUDY Nine computing PhD students, who were all experienced information processors, were individually observed conducting single session web-based searches to locate information sources for their own authentic, researchrelated tasks. A pre-observation questionnaire was used to collect demographic data and some typical information behaviours, but the main data collection was via ‘thinkaloud’ protocol, audio recorded during the 1.25hrs observations. Evidence of external representations (ERs) was collected post-session, to verify any claims. Emergent Strategies Several emergent categories of user’ information seeking strategies were identified from inductive analysis of the transcribed audio recordings. Initially the emergent strategies were broadly categorized as ‘Search’, ‘Evaluation’, and ‘Use’.