It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it: Design guidelines to better support online browsing

Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Tech

Buchanan

et al. 2021

Self Cite

The ubiquitous search box promised to democratize knowledge access by making information universally accessible. But while many search engines cater well for certain user groups, information tasks and content types, they cater poorly for others. Poorly-served users include those with certain types of impairment (e.g. dyslexia), and weakly-supported tasks include highly exploratory goals, where it can be difficult to express information needed as a query. Furthermore, the overdominance of search functionality in many information environments has restricted support for other important forms of information acquisition, such as serendipitous information encountering and creative 'inspiration hunting.' Search results and recommendations can also promote certain types of content due to algorithmic bias. Rather than act as a great leveler by making information acquisition effective, efficient and enjoyable for all, search engines often unfairly favor some types of user, task or content over others. In short, search is not always equitable. This panel discussion will elucidate the inequity of search as an information acquisition paradigm from multiple perspectives and propose design principles to ensure more equitable information acquisition.

Section: The Task Perspective: Search Unfairly Favors Some Types Of Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Search a Great Leveler? Ensuring More Equitable Information Acquisition

Makri

Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Tech

Buchanan

et al. 2021

Self Cite

“…[55; 76]. Search interfaces alone cannot support browsing, but what interfaces do support browsing remains an open research question, though some guidelines are emerging [73]. We know that library browsers-in addition to using the potentially highly structured environment of the main shelvesdeliberately seek out display tables and recently returned piles [80; 92].…”

Section: Browsingmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Birthing Dancing Stars

Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval

Makri

Chang

et al. 2020

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While computers causing chaos is a common social trope, nearly the entirety of the history of computing is dedicated to generating order. Typical interactive information retrieval tasks ask computers to support the traversal and exploration of large, complex information spaces. The implicit assumption is that they are to support users in simplifying the complexity (i.e. in creating order from chaos). But for some types of task, particularly those that involve the creative application or synthesis of knowledge or the creation of new knowledge, this assumption may be incorrect. It is increasingly evident that perfect order-and the systems we create with it-support highly-structured information tasks well, but provide poor support for less-structured tasks. We need digital information environments that help create a little more chaos from order to spark creative thinking and knowledge creation. This paper argues for the need for information systems that offer what we term 'bounded chaos', and offers research directions that may support the creation of such interfaces CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing~Empirical studies in interaction design • Human-centered computing~Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms; • Information systems~Task models

“…Placemarking is the use of a hand or an object to hold one's place in the shelves while an item is examined in more detail. This behaviour was first identified in 1992, but it was not described in detail until 2017 [20; 27], and remains entirely unsupported in major book information seeking interfaces [27].…”

Section: Placemarkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stand in the place where you work

Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction

2018

Self Cite

Information seeking is cognitively intense work, and browsing is particularly so. In complex environments, users will often support their work by using their bodies or artefacts around them to support the task at hand. When we move processes that have traditionally been performed in physical environments online, we need to consider any elements of cognition distribution, and how they might be supported in the new system. In this paper we discuss one form of external cognition during browsing: that of placemarking or context retention. We use data from an observational study to form detailed descriptions of five behaviours that constitute placemarking in some way and point to avenues for understanding how we might support these behaviours in a digital environment.