Designing for the Wisdom of Elders: Age Related Differences in Online Search Strategies

Youmans, Robert J.; Bellows, Brooke G.; González, Christian; Sarbone, Brittany; Figueroa, Ivonne J.

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39191-0_27

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…For example, older people are more structured in their search for information, but this involves spending more time selecting suitable search terms and evaluating search engine results pages (SERP). Younger people are more likely to switch between different sites, are more impulsive in their selection, and make more mistakes (Youmans et al 2013). For complex tasks, older people may even have an advantage because they can refer to their crystallized knowledge (Karanam and van Oostendorp 2016).…”

Section: The Younger the More Literate In Searching The Web?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Van Deursen, van Dijk, and Peters (2011), for example, show that older people are more experienced at selecting, evaluating and strategically using information. People also develop mental representations of the Web, which in turn influence their search strategies (Youmans et al 2013). For example, older users seem to be less digitally literate when using search engines.…”

Section: Research Interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, older users seem to be less digitally literate when using search engines. But this is not due to general deficiencies; instead, it is because their preferred way of interacting with the Web, and thus their mental model, does not fit the technical design of the Internet (Youmans et al 2013). Since prior studies have often overlooked the complex cognitive demands necessary to conduct a proper Web search (Brand-Gruwel and Stadtler 2011), this paper compares the cognitive strategies that younger and older Internet users employ during active and intentional information seeking (RQ1) by reconstructing their overall approaches to Web searching (RQ2).…”

Section: Research Interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Informationskompetenz ist keine Frage der Schnelligkeit

Wieland

2019

MedienPädagogik

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When comparing how younger and older internet users search for information, young people often impress by operating Web applications quickly and effortlessly. However, information literacy is not only a question of speed; it is highly dependent on cognitive abilities such as monitoring and regulating the search process. To avoid a general deficiency perspective on older Web users, this study goes beyond the results of Web searching to focus on individual approaches to information problem solving. We conducted ten guided interviews based on two different search tasks the participants (aged 16-77) worked on while thinking aloud. Applying a qualitative content analysis approach, we find that younger participants (aged 16-26) use more productive strategies to collect information, but observed no age-related differences in completing a complex task. The strong task dependence of our results underlines the necessity of teaching regulative search techniques that are suitable for solving unstructured everyday problems in order to ensure that all users can make the most of today’s rich but unstructured information environment.

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Section: The Younger the More Literate In Searching The Web?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research Interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Research Interestmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Informationskompetenz ist keine Frage der Schnelligkeit

Wieland

2019

MedienPädagogik

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“…Youmans et al [26] conducted a study in which older adults were found to follow a more structured and methodical approach to information search such as careful selection of query terms and spending longer time evaluating the search results whereas younger adults were found to follow a more impulsive strategy that involved more switches between search results and websites and more clicks on irrelevant search results. A more recent study by [3] found significant differences in the amount of time allocated to the three phases of information search: planning, controlling and evaluating in relation to age and task difficulty.…”

Section: Aging and Information Search Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting Information Search by Older Adults

Oostendorp

Karanam

2016

Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics

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Using cognitive models of web-navigation to generate support has long been a topic of research. In this paper, we address two limitations in this area. First, these models have so far been used to generate support for navigation within a website and not for interaction with a search engine. Second, very few studies have looked at the usefulness of such model-generated support for older adults who are known to be less efficient than younger adults. An experiment with 24 younger and 24 older adults on six simple and six difficult information search tasks was conducted. Results showed that the semantic relevance of queries showed a decreasing trend across reformulations for older adults and remained constant for younger adults, indicating that as older adults reformulated, they produced queries that were further away from the target information, which could be the reason for their lower efficiency. Based on these outcomes, two types of model-generated support mechanisms for interaction with a search engine are proposed, one which visually highlights the most relevant search result given a query and the other which monitors the average semantic relevance of search results for a given query and warns the user if it falls below a threshold.

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“…Because previous publications disagreed about how concurrent verbal protocol affected performance, our own hypotheses about how concurrent verbal protocol would affect participants were admittedly tentative. However, we designed the studies reported here after observing that some participants in an unrelated study seemed to have more trouble learning how to vocalize during tasks that required frequent task-set switching, changes in mental strategy (see Youmans, Bellows, Gonzalez, Sarbone, & Figueroa, 2013). On the basis of those observations, we predicted that concurrent verbal protocols would negatively affect performance on tasks that required task-set switching because vocalization causes users to more heavily fixate on a single mental strategy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Task-Set Switching On Concurrent Verbal Protocol

Youmans

González

Figueroa

et al. 2013

Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual

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Concurrent verbal protocol (CVP) is a common usability testing and analysis technique that requires people to continuously vocalize their thoughts as they complete a task. Given the widespread use of concurrent verbal protocols in applied domains, it is surprising how little is known regarding concurrent verbal protocol's effect on task performance. In the current series of studies, we examined how concurrent verbal protocols affected performance on two tasks that required users to frequently switch between cognitive strategies. Data revealed that CVP slowed down participants in comparison with participants who completed tasks in silence. The number of strategy changes that were required to complete a task did not affect this performance decrement. We conclude by discussing the limitations of the experiments reported here, and with practical advice for usability experts who use CVP in their own work.

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Designing for the Wisdom of Elders: Age Related Differences in Online Search Strategies

Cited by 6 publications

References 16 publications

Informationskompetenz ist keine Frage der Schnelligkeit

Informationskompetenz ist keine Frage der Schnelligkeit

Supporting Information Search by Older Adults

The Effects of Task-Set Switching On Concurrent Verbal Protocol

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