Introduction to Information Access and Usability Minitrack

Abstract

This minitrack addresses a broad range of issues related to the design of the next generation of information retrieval systems, especially related to improving web search effectiveness from the user perspective. The core of this research is how to help the user access and make use of digital data. These issues are of prime interest to researchers, developers, and information managers. The multidisciplinary nature of this emerging area allows us to engage as a community of participants with a wide range of interests, including retrieval design, HCI, information seeking behavior, and information management. Information Retrieval supports the computerized search of large document and digital media collections (millions or billions of items) to select small subsets of those documents relevant to a user's information need. Such algorithms are the basis for internet search engines and question-answering systems. At the same time, we know relatively little about the users who deal with a multi-billion-page Web. Further research is needed to address the user issues related to effectiveness and quality of experience when interacting with search engines. New metrics and methodologies are needed for retrieval evaluation as both the data sets of interest and user expectations grow exponentially. A focus on the user perspective allows us to align the user focus and the system focus in a multi-disciplinary forum that includes theoretical foundations, evaluation measures, methodologies, case studies and user study results. This year in the Information Access & Retrieval MiniTrack we include papers that cover this multidisciplinary approach. One paper, Appropriate Software Components for Mobile End-User Devices Executive Information Systems Up Close and Personalized as an Example, presents design principles for the design of interfaces for mobile devices. Two papers, Building Support for Web Information Gathering Tasks, and Characterizing Queries in Different Search Tasks, explore user behavior related to web search. The first paper examines characteristics of search specific to longer gathering tasks. The second of these papers explores the more general issue of types of tasks for a range of web information needs. The paper, Determinants of Information Channel Choice: The Impact of Task Complexity and Dispositional Character Traits, is a behavioral study of how made channel choice. The final paper, Cobre: A Comparative Book Reader for Los Primeros Libros, presents a novel reader model based on film strip metaphor. 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences