Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Institut für Bibliotheks- und Informations­wissen­schaft

Introduction into interactive information retrieval and user experience methods

This workshop offers a hands-on introduction and discussion for standard and innovative methods in IIR and UX, which might help extend our understanding of people’s information behavior. This workshop bridges several information and human-computer-interaction research areas and thus contributes to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of humans, interactions and context.

Workshop at the ISIC 2020 conference, South Africa

Workshop organizers:

Prof. Elke Greifeneder & Dr. Maria Gäde 

Berlin School of Library and Information Science

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

greifeneder[at]ibi.hu-berlin.de &
maria.gaede[at]ibi.hu-berlin.de

Workshop Description:

Recent information behavior research directions, most particular information practice and information experience, call for a holistic study of people's information behavior. So far, many studies rely on qualitative methods such as interviews or focus groups, and ethnographic analyses to gain holistic insights. Methods from related research areas such as interactive information retrieval (IIR) or user experience (UX) are rarely used in information behavior. The digital transformation has a large influence on people’s professional and private lives and thus on their information behavior. It is essential to know more about users' information behaviour in digital environments. In a time when Scopus lists for the year 2019 more than 15.000 newly published articles on Big Data and only 3% of them are not from STEM areas, linking the three disparate research areas, information behavior, IIR and UX, is more important than ever.

This workshop offers a hands-on introduction and discussion for standard and innovative methods in IIR and UX, which might help extend our understanding of people’s information behavior. This workshop bridges several information and human-computer-interaction research areas and thus contributes to an interdisciplinary approach to the study of humans, interactions and context. In the workshop, we will present the two adjoining areas IIR and UX. Afterwards, we will explain exemplary methods from both areas in detail as well as allowing participants to try out both methods.

All slides and videos can be found in the separate material folder on https://box.hu-berlin.de. If you have registered for the workshop, you will receive the direct link via email.

9:00 AM Berlin/South Africa time: Welcome by the organizers
Welcome and brief presentation by attendees (Joint online session in Zoom - details via email)

9:15 - 10:00 AM: Part 1: Introduction in User Experience


The User Experience Session consist of four videos.

  1. The first video is called Defining User Experience and Usability. After this short video participants can define the two terms usability and user experience and explain the difference between the two.
    Duration: 6:20 min
  2. The second video is an introduction into standard UX methods. After this short video participants know the two standard UX methods, think-aloud-protocol and card-sorting and can decide when which method is the appropriate choice. If you are familiar with those methods, you can skip the video or just go quickly over the slides.
    Duration: 19:35 min
  3. The third video offers an excursion into the mapping of users. After this video participants are able to explain the difference between persona, empathy maps and customer journey maps and know when to use which mapping method.
    Duration: 8:49 min
  4. The fourth and last video is for advanced researchers. After this video participants have insights into less well-known UX methods such as love- and breakup letters, touchstone tours, photo studies and remote usability testing.
    Duration: 10:55 min

10:15 - 11:00 : Part 2: Introduction in Interactive Information Retrieval

The Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR) part of this workshop starts with a short introduction to the concept of IIR (-> see slides and video 1. IIR Introduction).
Duration: 14:05 min

Since this will be an online workshop we decided to focus on one method namely (deep) log analysis which will be presented in a second video and slide set (-> 2. Deep log analysis).
Duration: 28:04 min

The last part with video 3. iSBS_Task demonstrates the interactive social book search experiment as an example for an IIR study. You will get access to iSBS 2015 data (-> see folder iSBS data) and will be able to play around with the data sets.
Duration: 13:09 min

Some selected reading material is collected in the Further Reading folder.

11:15 - 12:30: Part 3: Practical session

Task description IIR:
Please have a look at the two data sets and the data description file in the iSBS data folder:

  • Questionnaire _2015.xsl
  • Logdata_2015.xsl
  • iSBS_documentation.pdf

 

Use the available data to answer one of the following or your own research questions

  • Are there any differences between users from different locations in using the two interfaces ?
  • Are there any differences between users in the lab and remote testing?
  • Which metadata has been used more often?
  • How do users rate the different metadata options?
  • What reasons for choosing books are giving? Any differences in genres or user groups?
  • ….

Task Description UX:

Activity Card-sorting: try to build your own cardsorting test using https://kardsort.com/
Please use the terms available in the material folder. Those are all real sub-headings of the ISIC 2020 conference. Prepare an open-card test where participants have to create the headings.

Update: If you like to try out how an implemented card-sorting test looks like in the tool optimalsort, try out this current card-sorting activity about conference websites. Please note that the workshop organizers have no relationship to the authors of this card-sorting test and only use it as an example: https://w6mwtly1.optimalworkshop.com/optimalsort/5n3wg323/sort

Activity Remote Test: For this activity, you should experience being a participant in an unmoderated remote usability test. We have prepared a test study, which whole purpose is to collect data so that we can examine the form and amount of data in our joint session. The software makes it possible that participants’ camera and microphone are recorded as well, which makes it more into a thinking aloud protocol test. If you would rather not include video and microphone that is also fine. You can also complete the test twice. As we said before, the purpose of this task is to show some features of remote usability tests as well as some drawbacks. We will delete the data afterwards.

Please go to the website: https://www.loop11.com/ui/?l11_uid=71225

If you still have some time and energy you can also try to design your own study. Simply use the free option “try for free”: https://www.loop11.com/dashboard/signup/

We will meet virtually in a joint session at 11:45 in the conference Zoom room to discuss the results of the tasks and answer any open questions. We will be available for questions on the practical tasks starting at 11:15. The practical session will be recorded and the recording will be made available for participants.

12:30: Workshop end