Paper Info
Title
What would 'google' do? users' mental models of a digital library search engine
Abstract
A mental model is a model that people have of themselves, others, the environment, and the things with which they interact, such as technologies. Mental models can support the user-centered development of digital libraries: if we can understand how users perceive digital libraries, we can design interfaces that take these perceptions into account. In this paper, we describe a novel method for eliciting a generic mental model from users, in this case of a digital library's search engine. The method is based on a content analysis of users' mental representations of the system's usability, which they generated in heuristic evaluations. The content analysis elicited features that the evaluators thought important for the search engine. The resulting mental model represents a generic model of the search engine, rather than a clustering of individuals' mental models of the same search engine. The model includes a number of references to Web search engines as ideal models, but these references are idealistic rather than realistic. We conclude that users' mental models of Web search engines should not be taken at face value. The implications of this finding for digital library development and design are discussed.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1007/978-3-642-33290-6_1
TPDL
Keywords
Field
DocType
generic mental model,digital library,generic model,mental representation,web search engine,digital library development,digital library search engine,content analysis,search engine,ideal model,mental model,user centered design,human factors,human computer interaction
World Wide Web,Content analysis,Search engine,Heuristic evaluation,Computer science,Usability,Human–computer interaction,Digital library,Search analytics,Mental representation,User-centered design
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
10
0.73
15
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Michael Khoo1393.95
Catherine Hall2977.62