Comments on: Four Modes of Seeking Information and How to Design for Them http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/ Boxes and Arrows is devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and the design of business. Mon, 20 May 2013 13:09:05 +0000 hourly 1 By: shuanlo http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5888 shuanlo Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5888 Thank you for the interesting article. I’m new to the field, and these are new concepts to me.

After reading this article, I’m wondering if it is possible to classify information seeking behavior according to two facets: 1) precise-vague, 2) aware-unaware.

Specific meaning the user knows exactly what he or she wants to look for; such as tomorrow’s weather in Taipei. An example of vague could be “how is it like to live in Taipei”.

In terms of design parameters, maybe the precise-vague axis maps crudely to a search-browse axis.

I’m not sure what the aware-unaware axis can map to. Maybe a passive-active axis? A passive feature would be like my browser’s record of my history and Google’s Desktop Search. Passive in the sense that the user initiates the use of these to seek for information. An active feature would be like showing related news headlines beside a news article. Active in the sense that information is being pushed to the user.

Perhaps an active-search feature could be my Firefox’s Google Suggest extension, and an active-browse feature could be a list of “most viewed”?

I’m not sure if these make any sense.

]]> By: bmljenny http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5889 bmljenny Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5889 I work part of my week at a library reference desk and I see these modes every day. But it’s a truism of reference that people never ask you their real question, so getting to their true mode often requires some negotiating. A user looking for a known item will often start out with a very broad question that looks exploratory – “do you have information about cancer” when s/he really has a specific article to find. When I start to answer the expressed question, I can see the mismatch on the user’s face… how do we see it in our systems?

]]> By: leobard http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5890 leobard Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5890 Scientifically, it looks hard to differentiate between

* 1. Known-item and
* 4. Re-finding

Why did you differentiate between them?

btw: the “finding and reminding” paper by bonnie and nardi is related.

]]> By: scottmcd http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5891 scottmcd Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5891 Nice article! :)

My first impression was that re-finding might be a special case of of Known Item searching. What would you say are some of the searching approaches or UI requirements that would differentiate them?

For any re-finding task, a history of visited pages or previous searches would help.

You can also use the approaches to generate more specific design guidelines. See this article that my wife and I wrote for User Experience.

]]> By: simonsmith http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5892 simonsmith Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5892 Enjoyed the Article, Though provoking:)

Would it be fair to say that the way search engines operate has affected the way that we search, making exploratory search more common, even for known item.

To take the example of the known item, if using a web search engine, my experience is that even if you know what you are searching for you enter one or two words related to your requirements, see what you get, refine the search terms slightly and so on. This is because entering a very precise query often either returns no results or the, engine is “confused” by other words in the string and returns many only loosely related items. Therefore you are using “exploratory” methods to find or re-find known items.

Regardless of how you seek the information, I think that the most effective way of meeting search requirements is a degree of personalisation. If you know who a person is in terms of what they have searched for previously, how they search and can derive an understanding of the intent of the query, but also understand the relationship between query and answer you can deliver a much better answer much quicker.

]]> By: andreszap http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5893 andreszap Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5893 Google Desktop has a (big_brother_type) feature that keeps track of EVERYTHING you do on your computer – this can be sliced by whatever (mainly date) – very powerful. I thought of that while I was reading about “re-finding.” What can we learn from Google? (and no, I don’t work there) :)

]]> By: dszuc http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5894 dszuc Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5894 Super read!

Much of the “3. Don’t know what you need to know” can be helped my developing product pages that are written in ways that the users understand. There are still so many product pages that are too technical in nature and dont assist a purchase process. Examples include: banking, insurance, computing, telecommunications product pages.

]]> By: ankur http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5895 ankur Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5895 Quite clear thoughts Donna. Thanks for sharing them.
I would like to add my thoughts to it. The ‘don’t know what they want’ also might include ‘what we want them to know’ or may be a separate section all together. It would include things like warnings and special offers ( in case of shopping ).

]]> By: donnamaurer http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5896 donnamaurer Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5896 I so love you guys. Thanks for enhancing the article with great thinking and examples!

]]> By: sehlhorst http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5897 sehlhorst Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 http://boxesandarrows.com/four-modes-of-seeking-information-and-how-to-design-for-them/#comment-5897 Great insight about how “search” can mean different things to different people. We’ve extended the idea a little bit on our blog to show the value of using personas. In our example, we show how “status update” means different things to different people too.

Persona grata

While it isn’t purely an IA followup, it is an interaction design extension of your insights.

Scott Sehlhorst

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