liberation of search tools to a “mass market”. Ian’s research continues to build on this premise, analysing interfaces and interaction models and fathoming the complex search motivations and behav- iours of a diverse population. His whirlwind tour of this eclectic body of research was compelling in its expo- sition of this softer underbelly of IR; the human elements that determine the success and longevity of a search tool. Ian asserted that our adherence to search solutions is transient and fickle. Retrieval tools like Lycos and AltaVista are a dim and distant memory, but they served a purpose at the time. They were a means to an end. Perhaps Google will be forgotten, done and dusted in ten years’ time? He cited the “Book House” online search model (1989) that is underpinned by the physical metaphor of browsing in a book- shop. This serendipitous model of infor- mation seeking behaviour is crucial to the understanding of the psychology of IR. We browse, interact, respond and adapt to the inspiration of the environment; albeit physical or online. We navigate pathways through “complex information spaces”. He flagged the work of Iain Campbell (2000) on an ostensive model of brows- ing: “People don’t want to interact with IR systems. They want to interact with information.”
Joe Public is ambivalent towards, indeed indifferent to, the backroom engineering of searches. We don’t have preconceived no- tions of the look and feel of an interface. “We don’t think about them. We don’t reflect
30 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
on them.” In short, we don’t really care; we just click on what we want, or what we think we want. Peter Ingwersen went one stage further by describing information seeking and behaviour as “a pain in the neck,” a necessary evil that had to be tolerated in order to achieve your research goals. People just cope with IR tools in order to “augment their deficient knowledge”.
I recall with a certain amount of nostal- gia (and trepidation) studying for my MSc in Information Science at City Univers- ity, London between 1991 and 1992. The stress of online search training fuelled by whirring modems in overheated computer rooms was palpable. Time was money, and search strategy formulation was a perilous activity.
Professor Stephen Robertson (recipient of the inaugural Tony Kent Strix Award in 1998) was Head of the Department of Information Science at City while I was a postgraduate student. He pioneered the probabilistic ranking principle that infor- mation objects (search results) should be displayed to the searcher in order of the likelihood of “relevance to the request, or of usefulness to the user, or of satisfying the user”.
Ian praised Professor Robertson’s
sig nificant scholarly contribution over decades, his work on IR theories and models alongside the design and eval- uation of IR systems. Concepts like “relevance ranking”, “relevance feedback” and “probabilistic retrieval” came flooding back. Probabilistic ranking is still the dominant model of IR that has had other
innovations and design features bolted on to it over the years. Yet, the ultimate challenge for IR researchers continues to be understanding how searchers define relevance or usefulness. Ruthkin introduced Robert Taylor’s 1968 exposition of four levels of infor- mation need and question negotiation, which still pose significant challenges for interactive searching.
l Visceral need: an unexpressed response to “a vague feeling of dissatisfaction”;
l Conscious need: a brain-held under- standing of what we wish to know;
l Formalised need: how we express and verbalise what we wish to know and translate our thoughts into a linguistic context;
l Compromised need: how we express what we wish to know to an IR system.
Compromised need is the base level that we are still at. Interface designers have toiled at the coal face to rectify this problem with query modification enhancements, resource recommen- dations and other decision-making capabilities, but these laudable solu- tions are still based upon assumptions that reflect the stakeholder perspective and world view of the individuals and technical teams who devised them. Over the years IR design has been rooted in efficiency, system precision and performance management. Ian recalled the insightful comments of a psychologist colleague who observed
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