Exploring online and offline search behavior based on the varying task complexity

Manasa Rath, Souvick Ghosh, Chirag Shah

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

In an information seeking episode, users often look for sources in online and offline environments depending on the task at hand. However, at most times users consider factors such as ease, time taken to complete the task, and the number of sources to be consulted as the essential factors while fulfilling the information seeking task. In our study, we explore the role of different cost variables – ease, time taken to complete the task, and the number of sources consulted – as the factors to be explored based on different cognitive task complexity levels, from Bloom’s taxonomy, by conducting a user study. We study the different search behaviors shown by users in online and offline environments based on the different cognitive task complexity levels and the three cost variables. We observed intriguing results that show factors such as ease, time, and the number of sources play a role in source selection while completing the tasks. Our study is a novel proposition in that we explore research in the direction of source selection based on different cognitive task complexity levels. The findings will contribute to shaping how tasks should be designed to use sources in a helpful and convenient manner. Moreover, the results also advance our understanding of the role that different affordances play in online and offline search behavior.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHIIR 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages285-288
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781450349253
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2018
Event3rd ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, CHIIR 2018 - New Brunswick, United States
Duration: Mar 11 2018Mar 15 2018

Publication series

NameCHIIR 2018 - Proceedings of the 2018 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval
Volume2018-March

Other

Other3rd ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, CHIIR 2018
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew Brunswick
Period3/11/183/15/18

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Information Systems

Keywords

  • Information seeking
  • Search behavior
  • Sources
  • Task complexity

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