Sponsored by EBSCO - Advanced Registration Required
Discovery is a relatively new concept that has improved previous library search methods - but from a user’s perspective, it still may not be ideal.
Improving the discovery search experience has largely focused on what is being searched but what about how users are searching? Users, especially those from the digital native generation, are accustomed to Google and Wikipedia. If information professionals insist that users learn a different way of searching on discovery products, we risk imposing a poor and unfamiliar experience on those users. The design of discovery products might need to be in harmony with the Google and Wikipedia experiences that are such a natural reflexes for users, so that their overall experience is intuitive and aligns with their mental models and expectations of how the web-based navigation and content behave. During this presentation, we will describe the findings from multiple qualitative research studies about Google and Wikipedia usage, including:
We will also look at other factors that impact user behavior such cognitive styles, cognitive overload/”underload”, multitasking, and user web reading habits. In addition, we will summarize theories on information encountering and points of user engagement/disengagement/reengagement. We will conclude our presentation with an open-floor discussion on how to translate users’ behavior and expectation into features on the discovery system that facilitate and support a true discovery process.
