Search (2 results, page 1 of 1)

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Abstract

This article explores the effects of undergraduate students' mental models of the Web on their online searching behavior. Forty-four undergraduate students, mainly freshmen and sophomores, participated in the study. Subjects' mental models of the Web were treated as equally good styles and operationalized as drawings of their perceptions about the Web. Four types of mental models of the Web were identified based on the drawings and the associated descriptions: technical view, functional view, process view, and connection view. In the study, subjects were required to finish two search tasks. Searching behavior was measured from four aspects: navigation and performance, subjects' feelings about tasks and their own performances, query construction, and search patterns. The four mental model groups showed different navigation and querying behaviors, but the differences were not significant. Subjects' satisfaction with their own performances was found to be significantly correlated with the time to complete the task. The results also showed that the familiarity of the task to subjects had a major effect on their ways to start interaction, query construction, and search patterns.

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Abstract

Although considered proxies for people to interact with a system, mental models have produced limited practical implications for system design. This might be due to the lack of exploration of the elements of mental models resulting from the methodological challenge of measuring mental models. This study employed a new method, concept listing, to elicit people's mental models of an information-rich space, MedlinePlus, after they interacted with the system for 5 minutes. Thirty-eight undergraduate students participated in the study. The results showed that, in this short period of time, participants perceived MedlinePlus from many different aspects in relation to four components: the system as a whole, its content, information organization, and interface. Meanwhile, participants expressed evaluations of or emotions about the four components. In terms of the procedural knowledge, an integral part of people's mental models, only one participant identified a strategy more aligned to the capabilities of MedlinePlus to solve a hypothetical task; the rest planned to use general search and browse strategies. The composition of participants' mental models of MedlinePlus was consistent with that of their models of information-rich Web spaces in general.