Examination of Effects of Time Constraint and Task Type on Users' Query Typing Behaviors

Abstract

Contextual factors have been found to be an important factor in information searching behaviors, however, little attention has been paid to the influence of contextual factors on users’ query typing behaviors. This study aims to explore the influence of two different contextual factors (with or without time constraint and two kinds of task type) on users’ query typing behaviors. We recruited 40 college students and conducted a user experiment, in which each participant completed two types of search tasks (Fact Finding and Information Understanding) in two different time conditions. The results show that time constraint encourages users to increase their query typing speed. Furthermore, the task type affects query length and rate of keystroke errors.