READING ASSIGNMENT
Title : A Framework for Reuse of User Experience in Web Browsing
Author/s : Song, Guangfeng and Salvendy, Gavriel
Source : Behaviour & Information Technology; Mar/Apr2003, Vol. 22 Issue 2, p79, 12p
URL : http://search.ebscohost.com/. Accessed: 13 August 2008
The things I learned from this reading assignment also translate to a critique on web-based information retrieval. The article I have read focused on the analysis of user experience and problems encountered during the actual information retrieval.
Undeniably, the publishing paradigm of the Web makes it possible to deliver information to public quickly; it lacks the ability to adapt to individual users. Web site and Web browsers are memory-less in that they treat every user as a new user, ignorant of the fact that some users may be browsing the same site with the same browser everyday. We, users of the Web may intentionally use bookmarks. In the extreme end, this results often to unclassified, long bookmark lists. The valuable history of the Web browsers’ interaction with users is often discarded instead of utilized. The user activities kept in the log files of the Web sites are group experience, not the individual experience that helps the learning and adaptation of the information system towards the needs of a particular individual.
The Web as we all know is a space constituted by a vast amount of diverse, complex, multimedia information that is richly interconnected and cross-referenced through hypermedia links to provide information access. This very nature impedes effective information retrieval because all users have to develop a correct mental mode or representation of the web information space to select and execute effective strategies in Web information retrieval. This also poses a pitfall to site developers. This scenario obligates them to think and formulate plans in supporting the users of the Web to discover and rediscover useful information from the Web site. Thus, the Web must provide a good history mechanism and “web orientation” to supplement users’ memory.
Without entirely discrediting the merits of the Web, I would like to argue that the problems aforementioned are due partly to the huge diversity of users and content – from scholarly to smut, a situation that previous information systems did not face. This can be remedied by encouraging a collaborative approach among billions of users. This is in the premise that some users are better than others at using the Web system. Experienced Web users could share their successful experience on the Web easily with other people, enabling newcomers to solve their information retrieval problems. After all, with all its flaws and followings, the Web has been created to connect the dots of the global information community.
