User-Orented IR Research Approaches
Wilson’s model has also been applied to examine different user groups’ information- seeking behavior. Guided by this model of the problem-solving process, Wilson, Ford, Ellis, Foster, and Spink (2002) studied the mediated search between a pro- fessional search intermediary and faculty and research students engaged in either personal or externally supported research projects. The article demonstrated that the problem-solving model serves as a useful framework in understanding information- seeking behavior. Drawing information-seeking strategies from Wilson’s model, Thivant (2005) analyzed information-seeking and information use in a professional context, in particular the information-seeking behavior of economists and business analysts. This study demonstrated that the professional context and the activity itself can influence information-seeking behaviors. Citing Wilson’s model, Zach (2005) identified the information-seeking and information-stopping behavior of senior arts administrators in the process of achieving their management tasks. The author further discussed the potential for applying the results of the study to confirm and expand existing models of information-seeking behavior.
1. Work Domain
a. What information should be measured? (sensors) b. What information should be derived? (models) c. How should information be organized? (database) 2. Control tasks
a. What goals must be purposed and what are the constraints on those goals?
(procedures or automation)
b. What information and relations are relevant for particular classes of situations? (context-sensitive interface)
3. Strategies
a. What frames of reference are useful? (dialogue modes) b. What control mechanisms are useful? (process flow) 4. Social-organizational
a. What are the responsibilities of all of the actors? (role allocation) b. How should actors communicate with each other? (organizational struc-
ture)
5. Work competencies
a. What knowledge, rules, and skills do workers need to have? (selection, training and interface form) (p. 120)
Pejtersen, Fidel, and their associates wrote a series of articles that applied CWA to library and information science, especially system design. Book House, one of the first interactive multimedia online public access catalogues (OPACs), was designed based on the CWA approach (Pejtersen, 1992). Guided by the same approach, the Design Explorer project, which supplemented the Book House project, specified requirements for an information system that effectively enabled design team members to interact more effectively in the design process. This framework is the basis for the specification of a digital library system supporting access to a wide network of heterogeneous databases and resources (Pejtersen, Sonnenwald, Buur, Govindaraj,
& Vicente, 1997; Pejtersen & Fidel, 1998). It was also applied to analyze how to design systems to support engineers’ searching for people in addition to searching for documents because they rely on people as sources of information (Hertzum &
Pejtersen, 2000). Recently, it was introduced to investigate the collaboration in European film archives for the potential development of a distributed multimedia film collaboratory that supports the preservation, analysis, indexing and retrieval of films (Hertzum, Pejtersen, Cleal, & Albrechtsen, 2002). In addition, the CWA approach has been shown to be a powerful tool for the evaluation of system designs (Naikar & Sanderson, 2001).
User-Orented IR Research Approaches
The CWA approach has also been used to understand human-information interaction.
Sonnenwald and Pejtersen (1994) developed a conceptual representation of informa- tion space based on field studies of relationships in cognitive work dimensions and communication networks for the design of information retrieval systems. The CWA approach was applied to study high school students’ problems in Web searching and offer recommendations for design (Pejtersen & Fidel, 1998; Fidel et al., 1999).
The cognitive work analysis framework has guided the field study to investigate situations where members of a work team seek and use information collaboratively to further design systems to support collaborative information retrieval (Fidel et al., 2000). Directed by the CWA framework, Fidel, Pejtersen, Cleal, and Bruce (2004) examined the design engineers’ collaborative IR events, in particular the multiple dimensions underlying collaborative IR: the cognitive dimension, the specific task and decision, the organization of the teamwork, and the organizational culture.
CWA has been also applied to the comparison of two design teams’ collaborative IR behavior (Bruce et al., 2003).
Pejtersen and Fidel (1998) and Fidel and Pejtersen (2004)) developed a framework for Cognitive Work Analysis as shown in Figure 1.4 (Fidel & Pejtersen, 2004, http://informationr.net/ir/10-1/paper210.html). This framework illustrates the invari- ant properties of human-work interaction in which the technology is embedded to support work. These invariant properties highlight the stability and regularity of dynamic work environments, and they greatly help designers to characterize and further predict actors’ information-seeking behaviors. They conducted a case study of high school students searching the Web for their homework to illustrate the model and its application for the improvement of Web design.
The following components and their properties are the essential parts of the model:
1) work environment, 2) work-domain analysis, 3) task analysis, 4) organizational analysis, 5) decision analysis, 6) strategies analysis, and 7) users’ resources and values analysis. The work environment investigates the environments in which the work takes place. Work domain analysis identifies the current and future means and ends of a work place, which includes the goals and constraints, priorities, general functions, work processes, and physical objects. Task analysis focuses on specific tasks that the actors have to accomplish. Organizational analysis involves work allocation and social organization. Decision analysis offers detailed analysis of individual decisions related to specific tasks. Strategy analysis selects appropriate strategies to fulfill specific tasks and decisions. Users’ resources and values analysis focuses on the knowledge and preferences that are related to information-seeking.
Adapted from the CWA framework, Xie (2006) further examined the dimensions and relationships of these interaction activities to study how people seek and retrieve information at a corporate setting. This study also discussed the applications of the results for the design of a digital library. After analyzing data collected from a Web survey, diaries, and telephone interviews, the author presented the characterizations of actors and work domain; more important, she identified three dimensions for
each of the four interactive activities involved in human-work interaction and their relationships: task activities (nature of task, types of task, time frame), decision activities (what to do, how to do it, when to stop), collaborative activities (types of collaborators, types of interactions, types of channels), and strategy activities (types of behaviors, types of resources, types of shifts). She enhanced the model by incorporating three dimensions for each of the interaction activities.