Models of the Information Seeking Process (Ch 3) From the book Search User Interfaces, published by Cambridge University Press.
Copyright © 2009 by Marti A. Hearst. In order to design successful search user interfaces, it is necessary to understand the human information seeking process, including the strategies people employ when engaged in search. Numerous theoretical treatments have been proposed to characterize this complex cognitive process (Belkin et al., 1982, Kuhlthau, 1991, Marchionini, 1995, Saracevic, 1997, Sutcliffe and Ennis, 1998, Jarvelin and Ingwersen, 2004). This chapter presents the most commonly discussed theoretical models of the search process: the standard model, the cognitive model, the dynamic model, search as a sequence of stages, search as a strategic process, and sensemaking. 3.1: The Standard Model of Information Seeking “Information-seeking is a special case of problem solving. Figure 3.1: The standard model of the search process, adapted from Broder, 2002. 3.2: Cognitive Models of Information Seeking.
Recommendation Engine Models. In a classical model of recommendation system, there are "users" and "items". User has associated metadata (or content) such as age, gender, race and other demographic information. Items also has its metadata such as text description, price, weight ... etc. On top of that, there are interaction (or transaction) between user and items, such as userA download/purchase movieB, userX give a rating 5 to productY ... etc.
Now given all the metadata of user and item, as well as their interaction over time, can we answer the following questions ... What is the probability that userX purchase itemY ? Collaborative Filtering Approach In this approach, we look purely at the interactions between user and item, and use that to perform our recommendation. Notice that each cell represents the interaction between user and item. The matrix is also extremely sparse, meaning that most of the cells are unfilled. Treat these unknown cells as "0". Different similarity functions can be used. Web searching interaction model based on user cognitive styles. 20+ stats you might not know about user search behaviour. One of the major trends explored in Econsultany’s new SEO Agencies Buyer’s Guide is that user search behaviour is changing.
In this industry, there’s no shortage of information around how and why marketers are using SEO, but to me, there seems to be a distinct lack of research which looks from the other side of the fence at how we use search as internet users. Best practice is extremely important, but so is understanding how people are actually using search engines. So I jumped at the chance to check out some recent research out by Performics and ROI Research, where they had surveyed people’s motivations and behaviour when using search engines. The data is US-based, but in my opinion reflect trends that are globally applicable. Natural search vs. When asked if they know the difference between natural and paid search results... 63% said Yes37% said No The age demographics of those who did know the difference between natural and paid search results...
Natural results: Paid results: