Information retrieval systems rely upon queries to represent users’ information needs, but in practice, queries are often brief, vague and ambiguous with respect to the underlying need (Jansen, Spink, Bateman, & Saracevic, 1998). This raises the question - how can we elicit better query input to IR systems? The approach we are taking to this problem is to incorporate a work-task framework into the query process. Information seeking research has shown that information needs are shaped by the context - situation, motivation, work environment, etc - from which they arise (Dervin & Nilan, 1986; Johnson, 2003). More recently, the IR community has recognized that contextual information has great potential to target search results (Allan, 2003). We are currently conducting a research project to design an interface component for a document retrieval system for IBM software consultants. The interface will support “job-profiles”: re-usable packages of contextual factors describing the consulting engagements that drive the information needs of this population. We will present the results of the workplace study phase of this project, and the design guidelines for the job-profile query interface.
References
Allan, J. e. (2003). Challenges in information retrieval and language modeling. SIGIR Forum, 37(1). Dervin, B., & Nilan, M. (1986). Information needs and uses. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 21, 3-33. Jansen, B. J., Spink, A., Bateman, J., & Saracevic, T. (1998). Real life information retrieval: a study of user queries on the web. SIGIR Forum, 23(1), 5-17. Johnson, J. D. (2003). On contexts in information seeking. Journal of the Association for Information Science, 39(5), 735-760.