Search (154 results, page 1 of 8)

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Abstract

Usability of Web sites has become an increasingly important area of research as Web sites proliferate and problems with use are noted. Generally, aspects of Web sites that have been investigated focus on such areas as overall design and navigation. The exploratory study reported on here investigates one specific component of a Web site-the index structure. By employing index usability metrics developed by Liddy and Jörgensen (1993; Jörgensen & Liddy, 1996) and modified to accommodate a hypertext environment, the study compared the effectiveness and efficiency of 20 subjects who used one existing index (the A-Z index on the FedStats Web site at http://www.fedstats.gov) and three experimental variants to complete five researcher-generated tasks. User satisfaction with the indexes was also evaluated. The findings indicate that a hypertext index with multiple access points for each concept, all linked to the same resource, led to greater effectiveness and efficiency of retrieval on almost all measures. Satisfaction measures were more variable. The study offers insight into potential improvements in the design of Web-based indexes and provides preliminary assessment of the validity of the measures employed

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Abstract

In this paper, we report on the second part of an empirical study designed to observe how users interact with World Wide Web resources. Applying a holistic approach, the researches examine users' cognitive, affective, and physical behaviors during user-Web interaction in order to understand better the nature of information retrieval on the Web, the needs of Web users, and the problem-solving strategies Web users employ. From analyses and the participant verbalizations collected during monitored searches, the researchers developed a taxonomy of problem solving strategies. The coding scheme was developed based on a content analysis of the integrated process data. Information from triangulation follow-up with participants via anonymously completed questionnaires, the taxonomy, and analyses of search transcripts were collected to determine 1) what problems users encountered during the interaction and how users solved these problems; and 2) which problem-solving strategies Web users considered and selected for finding factual information. The focus of the coding was on the participants' cognitive, affective, and physical behaviors in response to the components of the problems encountered, which included problems of the following types: Web interfaces, users' mental models, and the Web information sources. Searching behavior and problem-solving patterns are described and interpreted within the relevant situational context and the problems users encountered are identified and analyzed. Both the problems users faced and their problem-solving approaches endeavored evidence a strong reliance on mental models of the features available on sites, the location of those features, and other interface design concepts

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Abstract

In conjunction with the American Society for Information Science and Technology's (ASIST) annual meeting in fall 2001, the Special Interest Group an Information Needs, Seeking, and Use (SIG USE) sponsored a research symposium an "Effective Methods for Studying Information Seeking and Use." The symposium was intended to address the SIG's goal of promoting studies of human information behavior by focusing an the research methods that can most effectively be used to study information needs, information seeking, information use, and other human information behaviors. The symposium included the presentation of six refereed articles, which were revised based an the discussion at the symposium and are included here. The six articles describe the application of a variety of research methods, singly or in combination. Some of the methods are most appropriate for studying individuals and their interactions with information, while others can be applied to studying group behaviors. The studies were conducted in a variety of settings, from a Web-searching laboratory to an archive, from hospitals to the great outdoors (i.e., forest and river sites). Each method or set of methods was applied to a particular user group, including young children, teenagers, and adults. Each article makes a unique contribution to our repertoire of research methods, as briefly reviewed here.

Date

20. 1.2003 9:37:22

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Footnote

Zugl. Dissertation Univ. Wuppertal, 2001 u.d.T.: Aufbau und Nutzung von Internet-Sites: ein Web-Experiment zum Einfluß der Linkstruktur einer Website auf die Effizienz der Informationssuche und Flow

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Abstract

This paper highlights some of the significant findings from author's PhD: "Factors affecting the end-use of electronic databases in public libraries." Public libraries have a wide range of different types of users who, unlike academic or special library users, are not necessarily information-trained (see Coles, 1998). Whereas the academic, special library user may have specific information needs that can be met by electronic sources, public library users do not necessarily have such specific information needs that can easily be identified and met. Most user surveys have tended to concentrate on the searching and retrieval aspect of information seeking behaviour, whereas this study's user survey focused more on how people perceived and related to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It was not how people searched a particular electronic source, in this case CD-ROM, that was of prime interest but rather whether or not people actually used them at all and the reasons why people did or did not use electronic media. There were several reasons the study looked at CD-ROM specifically. Firstly, CD-ROM is a well established technology, most people should be familiar with CD-ROM/multimedia. Secondly, CD-ROM was, at the start of the study, the only open access electronic media widely available in public libraries. As well as examining why public library users chose to use electronic sources, the paper looks at the types of CD-ROM databases used both in the library and in general Also examined are what sort of searches users carried out. Where appropriate some of the problems inherent in studying end-users in public libraries and the difficulty in getting reliable data, are discussed. Several methods were used to collect the data. I wished to avoid limiting research to a small sample of library sites, the aim was to be as broad in scope as possible. There were two main groups of people 1 wished to look at: non-users as well as CD-ROM users

Date

22. 3.2002 8:51:28

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Abstract

Four focus groups were held with young Web users (10 to 13 years of age) to explore design criteria for Web portals. The focus group participants commented upon four existing portals designed with young users in mind: Ask Jeeves for Kids, KidsClick, Lycos Zone, and Yahooligans! This article reports their first impressions on using these portals, their likes and dislikes, and their suggestions for improvements. Design criteria for children's Web portals are elaborated based upon these comments under four headings: portal goals, visual design, information architecture, and personalization. An ideal portal should cater for both educational and entertainment needs, use attractive screen designs based especially on effective use of color, graphics, and animation, provide both keyword search facilities and browsable subject categories, and allow individual user personalization in areas such as color and graphics

Date

2. 6.2005 10:34:22

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Abstract

Web links have been studied by information scientists for at least six years but it is only in the past two that clear evidence has emerged to show that counts of links to scholarly Web spaces (universities and departments) can correlate significantly with research measures, giving some credence to their use for the investigation of scholarly communication. This paper reports an a study to investigate the factors that influence the creation of links to journal Web sites. An empirical approach is used: collecting data and testing for significant patterns. The specific questions addressed are whether site age and site content are inducers of links to a journal's Web site as measured by the ratio of link counts to Journal Impact Factors, two variables previously discovered to be related. A new methodology for data collection is also introduced that uses the Internet Archive to obtain an earliest known creation date for Web sites. The results show that both site age and site content are significant factors for the disciplines studied: library and information science, and law. Comparisons between the two fields also show disciplinary differences in Web site characteristics. Scholars and publishers should be particularly aware that richer content an a journal's Web site tends to generate links and thus the traffic to the site.

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Abstract

Although the body of literature pertaining to the study of micro, context-specific behavior on the Web is growing, there lacks a global, macro analysis as to the behavioral dimensions of Web users' online activities. In an attempt to fill in the gap, this study proposes a three-dimensional, cubic typology for the characterization of Web users' online information behavior. We discuss a set of hypotheses concerning the relationships among these dimensions as well as those between these dimensions and related behavioral aspects. Online panel data consisting of month-long clickstreams of 2,022 Web users obtained from InsightXplore, Taiwan are made available for the empirical validation of the hypotheses. We found that a Web user's width (i.e., number of categories of Web sites explored), length (i.e., number of sites visited per category), and depth (i.e., number of pages downloaded per site) of online information behavior are highly correlated. Furthermore, these three dimensions of the behavioral cube are positively associated with speed of navigation, but negatively associated with the Web users' explicit online information search propensity and the degree of relatedness among the sites they visited.

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Abstract

Searching for information on the WWW basically comes down to locating an appropriate Web site and to retrieving relevant information from that site. This study examined the effect of a user's WWW experience on both phases of the search process. 35 students from 2 schools for Dutch pre-university education were observed while performing 3 search tasks. The results indicate that subjects with WWW-experience are more proficient in locating Web sites than are novice WWW-users. The observed differences were ascribed to the experts' superior skills in operating Web search engines. However, on tasks that required subjects to locate information on specific Web sites, the performance of experienced and novice users was equivalent - a result that is in line with hypertext research. Based on these findings, implications for training and supporting students in searching for information on the WWW are identified. Finally, the role of the subjects' level of domain expertise is discussed and directions for future research are proposed

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Abstract

HTTP server log files provide Web site operators with substantial detail regarding the visitors to their sites. Interest in interpreting this data has spawned an active market for software packages that summarize and analyze this data, providing histograms, pie graphs, and other charts summarizing usage patterns. While useful, these summaries obscure useful information and restrict users to passive interpretation of static displays. Interactive starfield visualizations can be used to provide users with greater abilities to interpret and explore web log data. By combining two-dimensional displays of thousands of individual access requests, color and size coding for additional attributes, and facilities for zooming and filtering, these visualizations provide capabilities for examining data that exceed those of traditional web log analysis tools. We introduce a series of interactive starfield visualizations, which can be used to explore server data across various dimensions. Possible uses of these visualizations are discussed, and difficulties of data collection, presentation, and interpretation are explored

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Abstract

Collating data from a number of log and questionnaire studies conducted largely into the use of a range of consumer health digital information platforms, Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (Ciber) researchers describe some new thoughts on characterising (and naming) information seeking behaviour in the digital environment, and in so doing, suggest a new typology of digital users. The characteristic behaviour found is one of bouncing in which users seldom penetrate a site to any depth, tend to visit a number of sites for any given information need and seldom return to sites they once visited. They tend to "feed" for information horizontally, and whether they search a site of not depends heavily on "digital visibility", which in turn creates all the conditions for "bouncing". The question whether this type of information seeking represents a form of "dumbing down or up", and what it all means for publishers, librarians and information providers, who might be working on other, possible outdated usage paradigms, is discussed.

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Abstract

In the UK, both anecdotal and research evidence points to ever greater and more sophisticated use of the Web to provide health information and advice. The study reported here adds to this research with an online survey of Internet users' reported use of the Web to access information about health and their opinions about the advice that can be obtained there. Over a period of three weeks more than 1,300 people responded to an online questionnaire produced by The British Life and Internet Project; 81 per cent or 997 of the respondents were British. The prime purpose of the questionnaire was to obtain information on the characteristics of the users of health information Web sites, to obtain feedback regarding for what they used online health sites and what were the perceived outcomes associated with using online health information.

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Abstract

Reports on a dramatic shift from subject to periodical title searching at Colorado University Libraries. States possible reasons for the change, examines problems encountered by users with searching the periodical title index and suggests how this change in online catalogue searching may affect future catalogue design and bibliographic instruction

Date

29. 7.1998 10:57:22

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Abstract

Usability evaluations and observations of users shopping at Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com) revealed some interesting user behaviors. The mixed behavior patterns were leveraged to create an interface for an e-commerce product. The author describes some design practices for providing a scoped search interface for an e-commerce site.

Date

22. 7.2006 18:17:44

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Abstract

A large number of studies have investigated the transaction log of general-purpose search engines such as Excite and AItaVista, but few studies have reported an the analysis of search logs for search engines that are limited to particular Web sites, namely, Web site search engines. In this article, we report our research an analyzing the search logs of the search engine of the Utah state government Web site. Our results show that some statistics, such as the number of search terms per query, of Web users are the same for general-purpose search engines and Web site search engines, but others, such as the search topics and the terms used, are considerably different. Possible reasons for the differences include the focused domain of Web site search engines and users' different information needs. The findings are useful for Web site developers to improve the performance of their services provided an the Web and for researchers to conduct further research in this area. The analysis also can be applied in e-government research by investigating how information should be delivered to users in government Web sites.

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Abstract

There is very little qualitative data on what impact the Internet is having on information seeking in the workplace. Using open-ended interviews, questionnaires and observation, the impact of the Internet on the British Media was assessed. The focus was largely on newspapers, with The Guardian being covered in some depth. Over 300 journalists and media librarians were surveyed. It was found that amongst traditional journalists use was light. Poor access to the Internet - and good access to other information resources - were largely the reasons for this. Of the journalists it was mainly the older and more senior journalists and the New Media journalists who used the Internet. Librarians were also significant users. Searching the World Wide Web was the principal Internet activity and use was generally conservative in character. Newspapers and official sites were favoured, and searches were mainly of a fact-checking nature. Email was used on a very limited scale and was not regarded as a serious journalistic tool. Non-users were partly put off by the Internet's potential for overloading them with information and its reputation for producing information of suspect quality. Users generally dismissed these concerns, dealing with potential overload and quality problems largely by using authoritative sites and exploiting the lower quality data where it was needed. Where the Internet has been used it has not been at the expense of other information sources or communication channels, but online hosts seem to be at most risk in the future.

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Abstract

Reports results of an online survey of in house users acessing California University's computerized union catalogue, the MELVYL library system, from public access terminals in the libraries of the California University at Santa Cruz (UCSC). The study included descriptive statistics on user status, affiliation, anticipated focus of system usage, judgement of ease of system use, and need for assistance. The transaction logs of respondents to the survey were analyzed and cross tabulated with demographic data on the same group of users. Particular attention was given to subject searching and to the dilemmas that confront users of a system in which heuristics are largely absent. Data was compared with similar data collected in a earlier study of user who accessed the MELVYL library system from remote sites

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Abstract

Presents a recently composite view of several user studies in information retrieval. Contains personal conclusions and speculations based on these studies, rather than formal statistical results, which so often are not comparable from 1 experiment to another. Suggests a taxonomy of user characteristics for such studies, in order to make results comparable. Discusses methods and effects of user training, then manner of expression of a query or information need, conduct of a search, use of the system command language or its equivalent, analysis by the user of retrieved information, and user satisfaction with outcome. Concludes with suggestions for system design and experimental methodology

Source

Canadian journal of information and library science. 19(1994) no.4, S.1-22

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Content

Beobachtungen und Befragungen Da kommen die beiden vorliegenden Studien gerade recht, untersuchen sie doch mit qualitativen Methoden, mit Befragungen und teilnehmenden Beobachtungen, wie Kinder das Internet entdecken beziehungsweise nutzen, welche Kompetenzen sie haben und entwickeln, welche Erwartungen, Interessen und Präferenzen sie für das Netz haben, wie und welche Orientierungen und Suchstrategien sie entfalten und schließlich wodurch und wie sie sich von den Web-Sites ansprechen lassen. Das wird jeweils an einzelnen Beispielen und Szenen anschaulich beschrieben, teils wörtlich dokumentiert, sodass man plastische Eindrücke bekommt, wie Kinder an das Web herangehen, wie sie sich zurechtfinden und was sie darüber denken und wissen. Die eine Studie (Christine Feil et al. 2004) wurde zwischen 2001 und 2003 am Deutschen Jugendinstitut (DJI) München mit Unterstützung des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung durchgeführt; an ihr sind mehrere ForscherInnen beteiligt gewesen. Entsprechend komplexer und differenzierter sind ihre Erhebungsmethoden, entsprechend aufwendiger ist ihr Forschungsdesign, und entsprechend umfassender und dichter sind ihre Ergebnisse. Teilgenommen an der Studie haben elf Mädchen und sieben Jungen zwischen fünf und elf Jahren; sie wurden in zwei bis drei mindestens einstündigen Beobachtungsphasen in ihrem Umgang mit PC und Internet per Video beobachtet, zweimal befragt wurden die Eltern und die Erzieherinnen der Horte, in die die Kinder gehen. Die andere (Susanne Richter 2004) ist eine literaturdidaktische Dissertation an der Universität Lüneburg, deren empirischer Teil schon 1999, also drei Jahre früher als die DJI-Studie, durchgeführt wurde. Beteiligt waren 25 Schüler, darunter nur sechs Mädchen, zwischen zehn und 13 Jahren, die von der Autorin nach ihrer PC-Nutzung befragt und während einer halbstündigen »Surfphase« über vier ausgewählte Web-Sites beobachtet wurden. Mithin sind die Populationen allenfalls für die neun 10- bis 11-Jährigen der DJI-Studie vergleichbar, die andere Hälfte ist jünger.
Tipps von Freunden Beide Studien beschränken sich nicht nur auf die Darstellung der empirischen Befunde: Außer der Aufbereitung der quantitativen Nutzungsdaten findet sich in der DJI-Studie noch ein informativer Abriss über »neuere Entwicklungen im deutschen Kinderweh«. Darin werden die neuen Kinder- und Jugendschutzregelungen abgehandelt sowie jüngste formale und inhaltliche Entwicklungen der Internetseiten für Kinder skizziert. Damit setzt das DJI seine Bestandsaufnahmen und Sichtungen von Kindersoftware und -selten, die es seit 1999 vornimmt, fort.* In einer Datenbank (unter www. kinderseiten.de) sind sie jeweils aktuell abzurufen. Insgesamt wachse die »Ökonomisierung des Kinderweh«; gerade die für Kindermedien symptomatischen Medienverbundstrategien werden durch das Web enorm verstärkt, wie es umgekehrt von ihnen profitiert, sodass sich Werbung und Inhalt immer intensiver vermischen (und kaum das gesetzliche Gebot nach Trennung einhalten). Nicht-kommerzielle Angebote, die es gleichwohl in Fülle im Netz gibt, haben es gegenüber solch geballter Marktmacht zunehmend schwerer, überhaupt die Aufmerksamkeit der Kinder zu finden, das heißt, überhaupt von ihnen entdeckt zu werden. Denn Kinder diesen Alters, darin stimmen beide Studien überein, surfen im eigentlichen Sinne kaum; sie merken sich die Adressen (URLs) aus Zeitschriften, von Fernsehsendungen oder bekommen sie von Freunden. Nur selten suchen sie welche gezielt mittels Suchmaschinen oder Katalogen; und auch spezielle Kindersuchmaschinen wie die viel gelobte Blinde Kuh (www.blindekuh.de) kommen nur selten in ihr Gesichtsfeld. Auch Richter beginnt - wohl typisch Dissertation - recht allgemein, mit der Darstellung (kontroverser) Medienbegriffe, von Web-Geschichte und -funktionalitäten und gängigen Gestaltungskriterien, was für das eigentliche Thema nicht unbedingt erforderlich ist. Aufschlussreich für den bibliothekarischen Kontext sind hingegen ihre Ausführungen zur Lesekompetenz und ihre Relationen zu speziellen Internetkompetenzen, die die Autorin auch empirisch erhärten kann: Denn Kinder, die flüssig, gut und sicher lesen können, erfassen natürlich nicht nur die Web-Inhalte besser, sie finden sich auch schneller auf den Web-Seiten zurecht und erkennen deren Strukturen (Linkpfade, Navigationsleisten, Buttons und so weiter) leichter und genauer als die Leseschwächeren. Ob man solchen Umgang sogleich als kompetentes Informationsverhalten und Surf-Aktivität werten will oder nicht, ist wohl Definitionssache. Denn auch Richter räumt ein, dass die meisten Kinder vornehmlich über das Internet spielen oder aber ihnen schon bekannte Seiten für ihre Hobbys, über Stars, Musik und Chat aufrufen. Dabei ist ihnen vor allem das Design der Seiten wichtig: Bunt, mit Bildern und Fotos sollen sie gestaltet sein, aber nicht überladen und durch Animationen in ihrer Ladezeit zu langwierig. Fachliches Computerwissen haben die Kinder gemeinhin nicht, nur wenige Freaks brillieren mit nicht immer ganz begriffenem Vokabular; und sie brauchen es auch kaum, denn sie lernen den Internetumgang durch Zugucken und kurze Handling-Tipps von Eltern und älteren Kindern. Eine systematische Internetdidaktik, wie sie Richter fordert, wurde vor vier Jahren offenbar noch kaum praktiziert.

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Abstract

The paper presents the results of a study on usability methods for evaluating Web sites. It summarizes the "Heuristics for Web Communications," and reports the practical experiences with these heuristics, contrasting them with the "Keevil Index" and combining them with user testing with thinking aloud. It concludes that working with the "Heuristics for Web Communications" takes more time and effort than working with the "Keevil Index," but produces more consistent results. The heuristics proved to be applicable both in heuristic evaluation and in combination with user testing.