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Over time, researchers have acknowledged the importance of understanding the users’ strategies in the design of search systems. However, when involving users in the comparison of search systems, methodological challenges still exist as researchers are pondering on how to handle the variability that human participants bring to the comparisons. This paper present methods for controlling the complexity of user-centered evaluations of search user interfaces through within subjects designs,...
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Information-seeking is important for lawyers, who have access to many dedicated electronic resources. However there is considerable scope for improving the design of these resources to better support information-seeking. One way of informing design is to use information-seeking models as theoretical lenses to analyse users’ behaviour with existing systems. However many models, including those informed by studying lawyers, analyse information-seeking at a high level of abstraction and are...
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Information behavior (IB) research involves examining how people look for and use information, often with the sole purpose of gaining insights into the behavior displayed. However, it is also possible to examine IB with the purpose of using the insights gained to design new tools or improve the design of existing tools to support information seeking and use. This approach is advocated by David Ellis who, over two decades ago, presented a model of information seeking behaviors and made...
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To help design an environment in which professionals without legal training can make effective use of public sector legal information on planning and the environment - for Add-Wijzer, a European e-government project - we evaluated their perceptions of usefulness and usability. In concurrent think-aloud usability tests, lawyers and non-lawyers carried out information retrieval tasks on a range of online legal databases. We found that non-lawyers reported twice as many difficulties as those...
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Purpose - This paper seeks to report an investigation into the ways in which end-users perceive a thesaurus-enhanced search interface, in particular thesaurus and search interface usability. Design/methodology/approach - Thirty academic users, split between staff and postgraduate students, carrying out real search requests were observed during this study. Users were asked to comment on a range of thesaurus and interface characteristics including: ease of use, ease of learning, ease of...
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The paper examines the information needs and seeking behaviour of lawyers in Lagos, Nigeria. Results reveal that many lawyer is perceived the need to know the latest decisions of superior courts as their greatest professional information need. Other expressed needs include knowing recent legislation, obtaining information on local and international seminars and conferences, and on acquisition and application of legal “know-how”. The library has been identified as the most heavily consulted...
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Research on Web searching is at an incipient stage. This aspect provides a unique opportunity to review the current state of research in the field, identify common trends, develop a methodological framework, and define terminology for future Web searching studies. In this article, the results from published studies of Web searching are reviewed to present the current state of research. The analysis of the limited Web searching studies available indicates that research methods and terminology...
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The study reported in this paper is part of a programme of ongoing research based on the model of the Information Search Process (ISP) developed in a series of prior studies by Kuhlthau. This study sought to gain a better understanding of the variety of tasks that involve lawyers as a particular group of information workers, how they use information to accomplish their work, and the role mediators play in their process of information seeking and use. Findings revealed that these lawyers...
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The information-seeking behavior of lawyers has not been fully investigated empirically. Prior work has tended to focus on legal research as the central task performed by lawyers in their information-seeking activities. This analysis of more than 150 interviews of practicing lawyers showed that legal research should not be considered information-seeking. The lawyers interviewed identified other tasks, such as administration of their law practices, as constituting problem-solving,...
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Our research focuses on designing effective search aids for legal researchers interested in law-related information on the world wide web. In this paper we report on the design and evaluation of two software systems developed to explore models for browsing and searching across a user-selected set of WWW sites. A directory services tool, LIBClient, provides a hierarchical index of legal information resources in an interface emphasizing ease-of-use by Internet novices and management of...
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The paper presents the results of a pilot study of 15 lawyers at various stages of their career. We examine novice lawyers at the beginning of their career and compare their concepts of task, information and information seeking with the concepts of task, information and information seeking of expert lawyers who have practiced law for more than 7 years. We observed that while novice lawyers have separate problem recognition and solution structures, for expert lawyers these structures are...