Measuring task complexity in information search from user's perspective

The thesis of this research is that performance on a task depends not only on objective complexity (a task characteristic) but also on one's perception of task complexity. This study allowed investigation of the influences of (a) cognitive ability, (b) motivation, (c) subjective task complexity, and (d) task experience on performance for an objectively simple or complex scheduling task. Potential determinants of subjective complexity were also studied, as well as the mediating effects of subjective complexity on the relations between independent variables (i.e., objective complex- ity, cognitive ability, and task experience) and task performance. Participants (N = 195) were undergraduates who prepared a 1-week work schedule for a fictitious film processing store under either a Simple or Complex condition. Those in the Complex condition were additionally required to account for employee time off and varying store traffic. Hierarchical regression revealed significant, unique main effects for objective task complexity and subjective task complexity in predicting task perform- ance when controlling for cognitive ability. Subjective task complexity was found to partially mediate the (a) objective task complexity-performance and (b) cognitive ability-performance relations. Future directions for research and theory are discussed.

Although web search engines are designed as one-size-fits-all tools, people do not come in one size, but instead vary across many different attributes. One such attribute is cognitive ability. Because information search is primarily a cognitive activity, understanding the extent to which variations in cognitive abilities impact search behaviors and outcomes is especially important. We describe a study in which we explore how people's cognitive abilities affect their search behaviors and perceptions of workload while conducting search tasks with different levels of complexity. Twenty-one adults from the general public completed this study. We assessed participants' associative memory, perceptual speed, and visualization abilities and also measured workload. To evaluate the relationship between cognitive ability, task complexity and workload, we conducted three separate mixed factor ANOVAs corresponding to each of the abilities. Our results suggest three important trends: (1) associative memory ability had no significant effect on search behavior and workload, (2) visualization ability had a significant effect on search behavior, but not workload, and (3) perceptual speed had a significant effect on search behavior and workload. Specifically, participants with high perceptual speed ability engaged in more search activity in less time and experienced less workload. While the interactions were not significant, the differences were more pronounced for more complex tasks. We also found a significant relationship between task complexity and workload, and task complexity and search behaviors, which corroborates previous research.

The college library is one of the collection services provided by the college to obtain information. In conducting information search, there are several information search behaviors. This study examines student information seeking behavior in the collection service of the Padjadjaran University FMIPA Library in the digital era. Information seeking behavior has a very close relationship with information seeking, because then information can be obtained. The purpose of this study was to determine the information seeking behavior of the Unpad FMIPA library collection service through six stages and to determine the relationship between information seeking and information seeking behavior. The research method is qualitative with observation and interviews. This research method was conducted on three Unpad FMIPA students and one Unpad FMIPA librarian. The model used in this study consists of six stages, namely start- ing, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. The result of the research is that students who need information have carried out the six stages well, namely students understand the information needed before starting a search, and are able to identify reference sources in searching for information, students use search information tools and their support- ers. the device with the help of lib.unpad.ac.id, can determine the forms and sources of relevant information that can be used, as well as identify search keywords, and make observations on information relating to their needs. And the last stage students choose information according to their needs and which are considered important. After going through the stages of searching for student information effectively, quickly, and precisely in finding the sources of information needed, especially gathering information at FMIPA Unpad.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the connection between musicians’ information seeking behaviour and the creative process in music, providing a framework for understanding the role of information needs satisfaction in musical creativity. A number of studies in information science literature have been carried out attempting to model cognitive, affective, behavioural and contextual factors associated with music information seeking behaviour. However, only few studies have addressed the relationship between information seeking behaviour and musical creative activities such as composition, performance and improvisation, listening and analysis. Design/methodology/approach – The focus of this paper is to provide a framework for the study of information seeking behaviour for the purposes of satisfying musical creativity information needs, combining the theoretical basis of an established model of information behaviour developed by Wilson and the theoretical perspectives of a music creative thinking model proposed by Webster. The key features of the two models are synthesized in a unified model of information seeking behaviour for musical creativity and enriched with research findings identified in the literature of both musical information seeking and musical creativity. Findings – The proposed conceptual framework offers an integrated interpretation of the combinations of information needs, information resources and environmental/personal barriers, which enable musical creativity. In the authors’ approach “musical creativity” is treated as a musician’s aim or ambition or drive for expression and is influenced by the way musicians seek information for that purpose. Therefore, musical creativity is an intentional behaviour which acts as motivator for information seeking and is affected by the available information and the musician’s information seeking profile. The current study include three important findings: first, the design and development of music library and information services for musical creativity; second, the development of music information literacy skills for creativity; and third, the information seeking behavioural perspective for universal musical creativity, and the implications for cultural musical heritage diffusion around the world. Originality/value – An integrated information seeking behaviour model which includes musical creativity is developed through the synthesis of two already existing approaches, that of Wilson for information seeking behaviour and that of Webster for creative thinking in music. The present conceptual study presents a three stage pattern or process for modelling information seeking for musical creativity: the process initiates with the intention-motivation for creativity, then proceeds to information seeking behaviour and then concludes with the musical creativity outcomes. This is the first study that seeks to understand the relationships between creativity and information seeking behaviour.

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to New Brunswick, New Jersey and the third ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR 2018). CHIIR, as you may know, has roots in two previously successful communities: The Information Interaction in Context (IIiX) conference and the Human Computer Information Retrieval (HCIR) symposium, which ran from 2006 and 2007 respectively. These meetings were focused on issues that involved Human Information Behavior (HIB), Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Those roots, as well as decades of research and development on information seeking and other forms of information interaction, human-centered design, and information retrieval are the backbone of CHIIR. At the same time, this vibrant new community has picked up more scholars and themes as it continues to attract new students and professionals, as well as emerging research topics that are evident in this year's program. In fact, CHIIR is one of the few forums that explicitly supports presentation of bold new ideas through its Perspective Papers category. In addition, we have picked up Demos as a new category for presentations this year. All of these wonderful things could not be possible without a large number of people making significant contributions. We are quite fortunate to have Katriina Byström, Falk Scholer, and Jeff Huang as our Program Chairs this year. These three brave souls took upon a tremendous effort of working with dozens of submissions, reviewers, and meta-reviewers and constructing a high-quality program while coordinating from three different continents. Soo Young Rieh and Preben Hansen, on the other hand dealt with higher than expected load for short papers and still managed to get them reviewed and assessed on time. Even our Doctoral Consortium (DC) this year ended up being quite challenging as we received twice as many submissions as before, but our fine DC chairs Jaceck Gwizdka and Vivek Singh found world-class mentors for these doctoral students. Thanks to our Workshops and Tutorials Chair Xiaojun Yuan, we have a fantastic lineup of tutorials on the first day and workshops on the last day. When the whole program was ready for the conference, it was our Proceedings Chair Roberto Gonzalez-Ibanez who managed to put together these proceedings that you are holding in your hands, or more likely viewing in the ACM Digital Library! We are thankful for having an energetic and resourceful local arrangement committee with Michael Cole as the Treasurer, Fernando Diaz as the Sponsorship Chair, Kaitlin Costello as the Local Organizing Chair, and Sunyoung Kim and Matt Mitsui as the Student Volunteers Chairs. And it was our Publicity Chair Anita Crescenzi, who helped us with not only the outreach efforts, but also with the registration system. Finally, none of these would have happened without the authors and reviewers from more than 30 countries whose contributions are reflected in every aspect of this conference. So, thank you all!

This article compares the information search behaviour of the consumers on the aspect of total information search efforts, sources of information and drivers of search behaviour of two different countries namely the UK and India for FMCG products. First of all, total amount of information search has been compared for the two countries to determine the variation in total amount of information search undertaken by the two consumer groups having different nationalities. Then a comparison of various sources of information used by respondents of the two countries was made. After this, information search behaviour was compared on the basis of drivers of search. Comparison between the countries was made with the aid of t-test. Results depict that Indians conduct more information search and also consult a large number of sources of information except past experience, which is more used by the consumers in the UK. An investigation of the drivers of information search reveal that Indians undertake more search efforts because they perceive more risk and are more involved with the product purchase. This article enhances the knowledge of marketing managers on how to segment the consumers on the basis of their unique behaviour and then develop their communication strategies that are customized for each market.

Information search behavior is an attitude or action in seeking or finding the information needed. Information search behavior is important to do to get the required information that can help in solving problems. Kriklas (2006: 16), argues that information seeking behavior is an activity in determining and identifying messages to satisfy perceived information needs. Themethod used in this research is a qualitative research method to describe the nature of the problems being monitored. Sulistyo-Basuki (2006: 78) describes qualitative research intending to get a complete reflection of things for the thoughts of people being watched. This research results that in the search for information, it is included in the novice category. Because according to Hsieh Yee, a novice information seeker is a non-professional searcher who has no experience in searching or has never attended college or practiced online searching.
 Keywords: Media Sosial, Information Searching Behavior, Instagram

I. Introduction Studies reveal that often group members collaborate when searching for information even if they were not explicitly asked to collaborate [1]. The activity that involves a group of people engaging in a common information seeking task is called Collaborative Information Seeking (CIS). Over the past few years, CIS research has focused on providing solutions and frameworks to support the process [2]. However, work in this field to date has always assumed that information seekers engaged in CIS activity are using the same access modality, the visual modality. The attention on this modality has failed to address the needs of users who employ different access modalities such as haptic and/or audio. Visual Impaired (VI) employees in a workplace may often have to collaborate with their sighted team members when searching the web. Given that the VI individual's search behaviour is challenged by poor web design and the shortcomings of current assistive technology [3][4]; collaboratively engaging in w...

Information search is one of the major steps in the consumer purchase decision-making process and is also essential in making a sensible choice. Researchers have attempted in a variety of ways over the past few decades to explore consumers’ information search behaviour, largely for consumer goods. Today’s rapidly expanding financial services markets are also attracting researchers’ interest in investigating investors’ information search processes. Investors pursue information search activity to manage their expected return on their investment. The information search process helps them to create knowledge for better decision-making. Financial service providers are keen to understand investors’ information search process to establish client-centric advisory services. The present study focuses on exploring relationships among the antecedents of stock market investors’ pre-purchase information search behaviour. In a mediated moderation model, interrelationships between subjective knowledge perceived ability to search, and motivation to search were investigated. The role of investors’ age was also explored as a moderating variable.

Increasing evidence from psychodynamic research suggests the unconscious influences our daily decisions. For information science, it is important to understand how the unconscious plays roles in information seeking. The current study uses subliminal psychodynamic activation to investigate how information searching may be influenced by textual messages that appear below the threshold of conscious awareness. Twenty-four college students participated in a controlled laboratory experiment, each searching freely on the Internet for needed information and saving useful sources for three search tasks. Each participant was systematically assigned to one of four subliminal psychodynamic activation conditions, with no or one of three different subliminal messages, “People walking”, “Mommy and I are one” and “I am enlightened”, each of which was displayed for 0.02 second every four seconds. Results show that users exposed to “People walking” had a higher effectiveness and higher efficiency in saving useful webpages than those exposed to “Mommy and I are one”. Results also show that search tasks influenced search behaviors regardless of subliminal psychodynamic activation conditions, which can be explained by task types. Our findings shed light on the underexplored area of the unconscious in information search and calls for future research along this line of research.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine information seeking behaviour targeted to music information seeking by amateur musicians, accompanied with empirical evidence from a survey on a community concert band. While several studies in the literature have examined information seeking in the context of hedonic motives (e.g. entertainment oriented), music information can also be used for utilitarian purposes by providing amateur musicians the necessary tools to improve their skill and become better in their practice. Design/methodology/approach – A review of the literature on music information seeking and an empirical study on members of an amateur concert band are presented. The theoretical construct of the survey is informed by Wilsons’ macro model of information seeking behaviour. This is employed in order to understand information motives and needs, as well as obstacles in information seeking of musicians. Findings – Musicians seek information not only for entertainment but for educational purposes as well as for the acquisition of certain music works. The use of the internet for information seeking as well as the gradual adoption of online social networks has provided access to new musical resources within the digital music networks. Originality/value – A person-centred approach for information seeking behaviour is studied and adapted for musicians. The survey provides new information behaviour results for designers of music information spaces which in turn are creating a new model of the relationship between music and society.

Information plays a significant role in the success of investment strategies. Within a non-advisory context, individual investors elect to build and manage their investment portfolios to avoid the cost of hiring professional advisors. To cope with markets’ uncertainty, individual investors should acquire, understand, and use only relevant information, but that task can be affected by many factors, such as domain knowledge, cognitive and emotional biases, information overload, sources’ credibility, communication channels’ accuracy, and economic costs. Despite an increased interest in examining the financial performance of individual investors in Saudi Arabia, there has been no empirical research of the information behavior of individual investors, or the behavioral biases affecting the investment decision making process in the Saudi stock market (SSM). The purpose of this study was to examine this information behavior within a non-advisory contextualization of their investment decision-making process through the use of an online questionnaire instrument using close-ended questions. The significant intervening variables identified in this study influence the individual investors’ information behavior across many stages of the decision making process. While controlling for gender, education, and income, the optimal information behavior of individual investors in the SSM showed that the Experience factor had the greatest negative effect on the Information Seeking Behavior of individual investors. This was followed by Risk Tolerance, Financial Self-Efficacy, Emotional Biases, Education Level, Formal Information Access, Regret Aversion Bias, and Subjective Financial Knowledge. The Information Acquisition and Information Searching Behavior was influenced by the Acquisition Skepticism, Regret Aversion Bias, Formal Information Access, Overconfidence, and Information Seeking Behavior. Furthermore, the findings indicate that Formal Information Sources have a statistically significant positive effect on the Information Seeking Behavior, and on the Information Acquisition and Information Searching of individual investors in Saudi Arabia. Finally, the Socioeconomic Status (SES) of individual investors in Saudi Arabia was significantly influenced by the employment status, work experience, age, marital status, and income.

This minitrack addresses a broad range of issues related to the design of the next generation of information retrieval systems, especially related to improving web search effectiveness from the user perspective. The core of this research is how to help the user access and make use of digital data. These issues are of prime interest to researchers, developers, and information managers. The multidisciplinary nature of this emerging area allows us to engage as a community of participants with a wide range of interests, including retrieval design, HCI, information seeking behavior, and information management. Information Retrieval supports the computerized search of large document and digital media collections (millions or billions of items) to select small subsets of those documents relevant to a user's information need. Such algorithms are the basis for internet search engines and question-answering systems. At the same time, we know relatively little about the users who deal with a multi-billion-page Web. Further research is needed to address the user issues related to effectiveness and quality of experience when interacting with search engines. New metrics and methodologies are needed for retrieval evaluation as both the data sets of interest and user expectations grow exponentially. A focus on the user perspective allows us to align the user focus and the system focus in a multi-disciplinary forum that includes theoretical foundations, evaluation measures, methodologies, case studies and user study results. This year in the Information Access & Retrieval MiniTrack we include papers that cover this multidisciplinary approach. One paper, Appropriate Software Components for Mobile End-User Devices Executive Information Systems Up Close and Personalized as an Example, presents design principles for the design of interfaces for mobile devices. Two papers, Building Support for Web Information Gathering Tasks, and Characterizing Queries in Different Search Tasks, explore user behavior related to web search. The first paper examines characteristics of search specific to longer gathering tasks. The second of these papers explores the more general issue of types of tasks for a range of web information needs. The paper, Determinants of Information Channel Choice: The Impact of Task Complexity and Dispositional Character Traits, is a behavioral study of how made channel choice. The final paper, Cobre: A Comparative Book Reader for Los Primeros Libros, presents a novel reader model based on film strip metaphor. 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

Daily decisions on food purchase are known to be undertaken using limited information search. However, when confronted with ‘ethical’ products, consumers often become more involved, and this results in a more extensive search for information. This research focuses on the information search behaviour of European consumers with regard to ethical attributes like animal welfare or environmental aspects of organic food by means of an Information Display Matrix. Row‐wise information search by product characteristics (attributes) was widely preferred over information search by product alternatives (column‐wise). Therefore, information (e.g. in the Internet) should increasingly be provided by attributes. The majority of consumers use simplifying and selective search strategies when looking for information on organic food with additional ethical attributes. Consumers tend to start information search in the top, left hand corner and move towards the bottom, right hand corner. Thus, principal attributes should be placed in the upper left corner and be followed by the next most important and so on when presenting information on an array of different products. Our results show that information search patterns of consumers depend on socio‐demographic characteristics like gender and age and, to a lesser extent, also on attitudes regarding environmental or social aspects of food production. Thus, marketers, particularly those using the Internet, should revise their systems of information provision and focus increasingly on consumers' needs.

Online programming discussion forums have grown increasingly and formed sizable repositories of problem-solving solutions. In this paper, we investigate programming learners’ information seeking behaviors in online discussion forums, and provide visual navigational support to facilitate information seeking. We design engines to collect students’ information seeking behaviors, and model these behaviors with sequence pattern mining techniques. The results show that programming learners indeed seek for information from discussion forums by actively search and read progressively according to course schedule topics. Advanced students consistently perform query refinements, examine search results and commit to read, however, novices do not. Finally, according to the lessons learned, we propose, design and evaluate Personalized Information Seeking Assistant system to help query refinement by summarizing the search results and to provide social-based browsing history. Findings suggest that paying attention to the query history may lead to further reading events, which subsequently resulting in potential learning activities.