Interaction with an enabling information retrieval system: Modeling the user's decoding and encoding operations

✍ Scribed by Cole, Charles

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 108 KB
• Volume: 51
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0002-8231
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(2000)51:5<417::aid-asi2>3.0.co;2-0

✦ Synopsis

With new interactive technology, we can increase user satisfaction by designing information retrieval systems that inform the user while the user is on-line interacting with the system. The purpose of this article is to model the information processing operations of a generic user who has just received an informative message from the system and is stimulated by the message into grasping at a higher understanding of his or her information task or problem. The model consists of three levels, each of which forms a separate subsystem. In the Perception subsystem, the user perceives the system message in a visual sense; in the Comprehension subsystem, the user must comprehend the system message; and in the Application subsystem, the user must (a) interpret the system message in terms of the user's task at hand, and (b) create and send a new message back to the system to complete the interaction. Because of the information process stimulated by the interaction, the user's new message forms a query to the system that more accurately represents the user's information need than would have been the case if the interaction had not taken place. This article proposes a device to enable clarification of the user's task, and thus his/her information need at the Application subsystem level of the model.