After 2 years of work and many revisions, our paper describing a large-scale study of daily information needs has been accepted to ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). And what’s even more exciting is that we will be presenting the work at CHI 2014 🙂 What a way to end 2013!!
This work is research conducted while I was based at Telefonica Research and it’s joint work with Mauro Cherubini and Nuria Oliver. Below is the paper’s title and abstract. I’ll post full details on the project, the methodology and key results in the research section of the website very soon. And in the meantime if anyone has any questions just drop me a mail.
A large-scale study of daily information needs captured in-situ
The goal of this work is to provide a fundamental understanding of the daily information needs of people through a large-scale, in-depth, quantitative investigation. To this end, we have conducted one of the most comprehensive studies of information needs to date, spanning a 3-month period and involving over 100 users. The study employed an intelligent experience sampling algorithm, SMS technology and an on-line Web diary to gather insights into the types of needs that occur from day to day, how those needs are addressed and how contextual and demographic factors impact on those needs. Our results not only complement earlier studies but also provide a new understanding of the intricacies of people’s daily information needs in-situ. Finally, informed by our findings we point to a number of research and design opportunities for future information-based services, focusing in particular on the mobile space.