Abstract We present a new paradigm to address the persistence of difficulties that people have in accessing and using information. Our idea consists of two main aspects: engaging wider society with usability and distributing the topic across disciplines. We claim that bad usability is a social justice issue. Primarily, we propose that usability should become the subject of widespread activism across society, enabling more people to realize that their usability problems are not due to inadequacies in themselves but in current designs. People should be encouraged and enabled to complain about their experiences with an expectation of improvements. We also propose that the current restriction of this topic to certain disciplinary units is overly narrow and that instead there should be radical embedding of usability concepts across many different fields and settings. We believe that the usability of information systems is core to information science and that information scientists should resume their historic role as heralds and pioneers of human–computer interaction.

Two articles in a recent special issue on Information and the Body published in the journal Library Trends stand out because of the way they are identifying, albeit indirectly, a formidable challenge to library information science (LIS). In her contribution, Bates warns that understanding information behavior demands recognizing and studying “any one important element of the ecology [in which humans are embedded].” Hartel, on the other hand, suggests that LIS would not lose much but would have lots to gain by focusing on core LIS themes instead of embodied information, since the latter may be unproductive, as LIS scholars are “latecomer[s] to a mature research domain.” I would argue that LIS as a discipline cannot avoid dealing with those pesky mammals aka patrons or users; like the cognate discipline and “community of communities” human computer interaction (HCI), LIS needs the interdisciplinarity to succeed. LIS researchers are uniquely positioned to help bring together LIS's deep understanding of “information” and embodiment perspectives that may or may not have been developed in other disciplines. LIS researchers need to be more explicit about what their original contribution is, though, and what may have been appropriated from other disciplines.

We posit that the well‐established interaction type “toolbox” currently providing the four interaction types Instructing, Conversing, Manipulating, and Exploring should be expanded to include a fifth interaction type, Responding, that accounts for user engagements in response to a system‐initiated engagement request. This expansion reflects that increasingly, smart systems request input from users without having been prompted by them, which is the essence of the existing interaction types. Systems utilizing the Responding interaction type proactively seek input from users in situations where said input is required.

There is a class of complex problems where solutions must satisfy multiple subjective criteria, while meeting specific quantifiable constraints. Route planning for leisurely travel is an example of a problem in this class. Constraints including total available time, transit times, and one's budget and subjective interests determine whether a potential solution is acceptable to a prospective traveler. In this paper we present a route planning (routing) interface that metaphorically leverages various elastic properties of a rubber band to allow for playful interaction with the relevant constraints. Each of these properties — attenuation, tension, and color — were integrated into an experimental system and then investigated in a series of task-based evaluations. Our research shows this playful interaction enables potential travelers to explore the solution space in order to find a route that meets, not only the easily quantifiable constraints, but also their own subjective preferences.

In this brief contribution I argue that an apparent dichotomy between information behavior seen as the behavior of individuals and their respective information styles and information behavior considered as a social practice may be resolved by considering the underresearched corporeality of the human body aka embodiment, which is a fundamental aspect of any kind of behavior, including information behavior. Practice is inherently embodied too, which means embodiment can be utilized as a vantage point to seek conceptual grounding for the rather diverse range of theories and models in information behavior research. The challenge then is to articulate in what ways and on what levels a particular approach contributes to advancing information behavior research. Conceptual clarity would also help information behavior models and theories developed in libraries and information science become more accessible and hopefully also more relevant to researchers in cognate disciplines.

It is widely recognized that knowledge sharing and learning are most effective when occurring in an appropriate and supportive context. As a consequence when designing an educational process the context has to be carefully considered. Implementing "situated learning" is straightforward in traditional apprenticeship models that inspired the communities of practice model, and the centuries old university model, but poses a formidable challenge when knowledge and associated practices are to be shared with large numbers of students as it is the case in most contemporary, demand-driven universities and even more in MOOCs. The traditional, and well tested, face-to-face teaching model that is in place does not scale even if videoconferencing is utilized to include students at remote locations. A few years ago, MOOCs were presented as a viable "solution", but while participant numbers remain impressive, experiences also suggest that the learning experience does not scale as easily. In this paper we discuss an alternative knowledge sharing and learning model, the Shangh AI Lectures (SHAIL) developed at the University of Zurich, Switzerland in response to the need of making top quality higher education available to a worldwide audience. SHAIL combines some of the strongest aspects of traditional face-to-face teaching, but also allows lecturing from and to a community which is globally distributed. Findings from delivering the Shangh AI Lectures annually over five consecutive years to up to twenty universities from across the globe (North America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Oceania) suggest that SHAIL is a promising way to address "global teaching", but there are also challenges to be addressed such as: finding a common base with respect to university requirements, student goals and expectations, teaching styles, and of course the actual technologies used.

There is a class of complex problems where solutions must satisfy multiple subjective criteria, while meeting specific quantifiable constraints. Route planning for leisurely travel is an example of a problem in this class, where constraints including total available time, transit times, and budget constraints determine whether a potential solution is acceptable to the prospective traveller. In this paper we present an interface that leverages, metaphorically, the elastic properties of a rubber band to allow playful interaction with relevant constraints. The resulting touch-based human computer interface enables the traveller to explore the solution space in the sense that constraints can be played with in order to find a route that meets the traveller's subjective preferences. Formal step-by-step evaluation with nine subjects confirms that leveraging the rubber band metaphor is useful in constraint satisfaction and that using the interface is intuitive since it leverages real-world experiences.

Literature to date has treated as distinct two issues (a) the influence of pornography on young people and (b) the growth of Internet child pornography, also called child exploitation material (CEM). This article discusses how young people might interact with, and be affected by, CEM. The article first considers the effect of CEM on young victims abused to generate the material. It then explains the paucity of data regarding the prevalence with which young people view CEM online, inadvertently or deliberately. New analyses are presented from a 2010 study of search terms entered on an internationally popular peer‐to‐peer website, isoHunt. Over 91 days, 162 persistent search terms were recorded. Most of these related to file sharing of popular movies, music, and so forth. Thirty‐six search terms were categorized as specific to a youth market and perhaps a child market. Additionally, 4 deviant, and persistent search terms were found, 3 relating to CEM and the fourth to bestiality. The article discusses whether the existence of CEM on a mainstream website, combined with online subcultural influences, may normalize the material for some youth and increase the risk of onset (first deliberate viewing). Among other things, the article proposes that future research examines the relationship between onset and sex offending by youth.

The global conferencing system Usenet nears offers an amount of articles per day that exceeds human cognitive capabilities by far although the articles are already organized in hierarchically structured discussion groups covering distinct topics.We report here on a situated information filtering system that significantly reduces the burden by supporting the user in acting situated.Interpreting the user's actions as situated actions, the approach complements current filtering and recommender approaches by completely avoiding the modeling of user interests; the user is the only instance for assigning (un-)interestingness to Usenet discussions.