The study examined age-related differences in behavioural and ocular strategies to search for information during web navigation within a website as a function of prior domain knowledge (high level vs low level) of users and search problem complexity (simple vs difficult problems). 23 older adults and 20 young adults had to answer ten search problems in two domain knowledge within two experimental websites (one for each domain): health and fantasy movies. In each domain, participants had to complete three simple problems (the main words of the instructions corresponded to links on the menu bar) and seven complex problems (the main words in the instructions were not present in the menu bar, so participants had to infer the relevant categories from the menu bar to find the information). Results showed that older and young adults adopt different strategies for searching for information through a specific website. Prior domain knowledge helped older adults improve navigation using more relevant navigational paths, improving time spent on relevant pages and reducing the number of areas visually explored on the website. By contrast, young adults adopted the same search strategies regardless of the task complexity and the level of prior knowledge domain required by the task.

While a clear distinction is established between simple lookup tasks and complex exploratory tasks, few studies have documented the differences between complex lookup tasks and simple exploratory tasks. To address this empirical gap, which has implications for system adaptability, the present study focused on these differences and the impact of users’ prior domain knowledge (low vs. high) on exploration-exploitation search strategies (thematic and navigational). The effects of prior domain knowledge on information search performance were also investigated, as well as the extent to which the navigational and thematic search strategies predicted users’ search scores and learning outcomes. Sixty students (35 in psychology, 25 in computer science) were asked to perform two complex lookup tasks and two simple exploratory tasks within and outside their knowledge domain. Results showed that when users performed tasks in their knowledge domain, they formulated more specific queries, achieved higher search scores, and produced higher quality factual knowledge. Complex lookup tasks led to more thematic exploitation and more navigational exploration than simple exploratory tasks. The search strategies predicted output performances differently, depending on the search domain (in vs. out). In light of these results, solutions helping users to improve their search strategies are given.

While great progress is made in the area of information access, there are still open issues that involve designing intelligent systems supporting task-based search. Despite the importance of task-based search, the information retrieval and information science communities still feel the lack of open-ended and annotated datasets that enable the evaluation of a number of related facets of search tasks in downstream applications. Existing datasets are either sampled from large-scale logs but provide poor annotations, or sampled from lower-scale user studies but focus on ranked list evaluation. In this work, we present CoST: a novel richly annotated dataset for evaluating complex search tasks, collaboratively designed by researchers from the computer science and cognitive psychology domains, and intended to answer a wide range of research questions dealing with task-based search. CoST includes 5667 queries recorded in 630 task-based sessions that result from a user study involving 70 french native participants who are expert in one among 3 different domains of expertise (computer science, medicine, psychology). Each participant completed 15 tasks with 5 different types of cognitive complexity (fact-finding, exploratory learning, decision-making, problem-solving, multicriteria-inferential). In addition to search data (e.g., queries and clicks), CoST provides task and session-related data, task annotations and query annotations. We illustrate possible usages of CoST through the evaluation of query classification models and the understanding of the effect of task complexity and domain on user's search behavior.

This study investigates how a search interface that displays users’ ultimate query (i.e. users’ current search goal) can cope with the age-related decrease of fluid abilities and support older users’ search behaviours. 30 young and 18 older adults completed 9 search problems with a regular web browser or with the experimental search interface. Results showed that older adults spent longer time on the search engine result pages, they needed more time to reformulate, and they had more difficulties exploring the search paths elaborated. Age-differences also appeared as soon as the beginning of the search. The support tool helped older users reformulate their queries more rapidly and elaborate more flexible search strategies at the beginning of the activity. Indeed, older adults who interacted with the support tool switched to the processing of a new search path more rapidly instead of exploiting their initial query (i.e. they visited fewer websites for the initial query produced and reformulated a query instead of keeping on conducting a deeper investigation of the search results provided in the search engine result page). Implications of these findings for the design of effective support tools for older users are discussed.

This study investigated the effects of age, prior domain knowledge and prior knowledge semantic pre-activation task on information searching. Results showed that the age-related differences were observed for the fantastic movies domain (for which older adults had significantly lower prior knowledge), whereas the effects of age were not replicated in the health domain (for which older adults had equal knowledge with young adults?). Semantic pre-activation of prior knowledge in the health domain was correlated to more analytic strategies when processing the search engine pages and when navigating.

In this article, we fill a dearth in the literature of Internet self-efficacy (ISS) measurement. We introduce the translation and validation of the Chinese-Mandarin version of the 8-item Information Retrieval On the Web Self-Efficacy scale (IROWSE scale), which has been originally developed in the French language (Rodon & Meyer, 2017). After back-forward translation procedure and content clarity, we ran a test of this new version. We checked the intrinsic psychometric properties including reliability, factor structure (CFA), and criterion-related validity regarding skills for retrieving information on the Web, general attitude toward the Web, experience, gender, and age. Assessment of construct validity indicated, as expected, a one-factor model for the eight items (with coefficient alpha equal to 0.90). Its sum-scores were not confounded with skill levels or general attitudes, and it founds its sources in direct experiences. Furthermore, research would take into account the Internet World population more broadly beyond the West with this new version.

In this study, we evaluated the ability of computational cognitive models of web‐navigation like CoLiDeS and CoLiDeS+ to model i) user interactions with search engines and ii) individual differences in search behavior due to variations in cognitive factors such as aging. CoLiDeS and CoLiDeS+ were extended to predict user clicks on search engine result pages. Their performance was evaluated using actual behavioral data from an experiment in which 2 types of information search tasks (simple vs. difficult), were presented to younger and older participants. The results showed that the model predictions matched significantly better with the actual user behavior on difficult tasks compared to simple tasks and with younger participants compared to older participants, especially for difficult tasks. Also, the matches were significantly better with CoLiDeS+ compared to CoLiDeS, especially for difficult tasks. We conclude that the advanced capabilities of CoLiDeS+, such as incorporating contextual information and implementing backtracking strategies enable it to predict user behavior significantly better than CoLiDeS, especially on difficult tasks. The usefulness of these modeling outcomes for the design of support systems for older adults is discussed.

Haptic technologies can open up new avenues for assisting older people in their daily activities, in particular in navigation and orientation tasks. A number of haptic wearables have already proven their usefulness for younger individuals. However, older adults' specific needs for a haptic navigation aid have seldom been investigated. The same is valid for the design of haptic patterns that would be both acceptable and efficient for the elderly. This paper is a contribution in this direction. It is focused on the design of a set of haptic patterns for and by the elderly. It presents the user evaluation that was conducted to assess the recognition rate of these patterns during a navigation task in an urban environment. Fourteen elderly participants took part in the study. The results showed that repetitions of a sequence within a pattern were not crucial for their discrimination and recall. On the contrary, they can cause memorization difficulties and confusion. We discuss these results and propose a number of recommendations for the design of haptic patterns adapted to the older adults' needs.

The user experience is defined as ‘a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system or service’ (ISO FDIS 9241-210, Citation2009) [Ergonomics of human system interaction Ergonomics of human system interaction – Part 210: human-centered design for interactive systems (formerly known as 13407). Switzerland: International Organization for Standardization]. Accordingly, some authors have argued that an interactive system has to be evaluated not only with regard to its usability and utility levels, but also with regard to emotional, attractiveness, and aesthetic levels. These last aspects play a substantial role on the general assessment of such systems and on the satisfaction of users. Some studies focused on the immediate aesthetic subjective perception of systems, on their subjective usability and preference perceptions. However, few studies, at least to our knowledge, have been focused on the reverse, that is, on the effect of difficulties experienced by individuals in using systems on the aesthetic appraisal. The present study aimed at determining the role of familiarity level with the website and the search complexity on the search performance and post-experiment appraisals of aesthetics, usability, and mental effort. The main results revealed that the search complexity affected negatively search performance, whereas the familiarity level affected only the re-reading of the search questions. The post-use assessments of aesthetics, mental effort, and usability satisfaction were affected by search performance. In addition, these variables were correlated except the expressive aesthetics, which seemed to be independent from the search performance and other subjective appraisals. Then, we discuss these findings in line with prior studies and present future ways of research.

Over the last few decades, several usability knowledge-based systems have been developed to provide user interface designers with usability knowledge (e.g. heuristics, usability guidelines, standards). Such systems are intended to assist designers during the design process, and to improve the usability of the user interface being designed. However, the assumption that such systems actually improve the usability of the resulting user interface remains to be demonstrated: virtually no systems have been empirically tested by designers who create products. In order to confirm this assumption, we conducted an experimental study in which professional web designers had to create webpages, either using a knowledge-based system – MetroWeb – or without it. This study was intended to determine the influence of MetroWeb on the professional web designers' cognitive activity, and to find out whether MetroWeb actually assists them to develop a user-centred design. The results show that the web designers did not very often use MetroWeb while designing webpages; however, rather surprisingly, the designers who did use MetroWeb more often exhibited a user-centred activity than those working without MetroWeb. We conclude this paper by discussing these findings, and suggesting future possible ways of research intended to assist designers to adopt a user-centred approach to their activity.