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Understanding user interaction,
key to improving Web retrieval
Ed Chi , Comdex, November 2002
This article
is written by PARC researcher, Ed Chi for Comdex
Fall 2002.
An excerpt from the article:
"While the
Internet industry has been making progress in
applying basic information retrieval to the Web,
the future of Web searching must incorporate an
understanding of how users interact with search
tools. At the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC),
a Xerox subsidiary, researchers are investigating
the next generation of search technology and have
created a model, called InfoScent, to describe
how users seek information on the Web. InfoScent
has enabled PARC researchers to model user traffic
patterns on the Web.
" InfoScent
describes users' perception of the value and cost
of accessing a piece of data and is used to simulate
how they surf for information. The model uses
conditional probabilities to simulate how users
might make navigational decisions and, by building
up a network of probabilities, simulates the likelihood
of reaching a particular destination. InfoScent-based
technologies, produced as a set of software components,
have the potential to be used in a variety of
Web-related software. . . "
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