Information architecture

1. Information User Studies for IA

2. i
Basic Concept
• A need associated with a level of uncertainty. Information
is required to reduce uncertainty.
• ‘Need’ is a feeling and ‘seeking’ is a process.
• The term information need is often understood as an
individual or group's desire to locate and obtain
information to satisfy followed by searching for
information.

3. • Use: The word ‘use’ is both a Verb and a Noun. The
verb implies consumption, put into service or seeking
for information. So, this could be the meaning and
definition of ‘Use’ hence the word is largely an inclusive
concept, and is more pragmatic.
• User: One who makes use of things; the types of user
are ‘Individual’ or ‘someone unknown’. The user is at
large, his behaviour unknown till he interacts with the
system.

4. • Information Need: Need is not want. The
perception of a lack of information that provokes
one to develop a need for it.
• Information Gathering: Accumulating, collecting,
assembling, aggregation. The functions or acts for
the present and future use of information. There
are types of gathering- seeking, harvesting and
mobilizing.

5. • Information Seeking: An act of searching for
information, an attempt to acquire or gain something. It
is further explained that seeking is the psychological
feature that arouses an organism to action towards the
desired goal, the reason for the action that which gives
purpose and direction to behaviour.

6. Types of Information need goes back to a definition from
Taylor’s (1962!) article “The Process of Asking Questions” which
describes four types:
• The actual, but unexpressed, need for
information (the visceral need)
• The conscious, within-brain description of the
need (the conscious need)
• The formal statement of the question (the
formalized need)
• The question as presented to the information
system (the compromised need).

7. A systematic flow diagram consisting of ‘surveying
(exploring), chaining, browsing, differentiating,
monitoring, extracting, verifying and ending as the
components of information seeking behaviour’ is
presented by Ellis and Haugan is presented in figure.

8. User Studies

9. Method of User Research Studies
• a generative method
• evaluative methods

10. Next class?
• Method of User Research Studies
In Detail

11. Thank You