Information Foraging Theory

From Information Systems at Pitt Business

Humans could be classified as informavores. Our cultural tasks require increasingly sophisticated information-gathering, sense-making, decision-making, and problem-solving strategies. Technological innovation has led to an explosive growth of recorded information, with the Internet hosts doubling about every year since 1992. Human minds are limited in their ability to capture and understand this amount of information. Providing people with this information is not the problem, but rather, the problem is maximizing the allocation of human attention to information that will be useful.

Central problem: the allocation of attention to gather and make sense of information Basic assumption: people will modify their strategies, or modify the structure of the interface if it is malleable, in order to maximize their rate of gaining valuable information - a strategy is superior if it yields more useful information per unit cost.

Info Scent: imperfect perception of the value, cost or access path of information sources obtained from proximal cues (e.g., bibliographic citations, WWW links, or icons representing sources)

[edit] Abstract

Information foraging theory is an approach to understanding how strategies and technologies for information seeking, gathering, and consumption are adapted to the flux of information in the environment. The theory assumes that people, when possible, will modify their search strategies or the structure of the environment to maximize their rate of gaining valuable information. The theory is developed by (a) adaptation (rational) analysis of information foraging problems and (b) a detailed process model (adaptive control of thought and in information foraging (ACT-IF). The adaptation analysis develops (a) information patch models, which deal with time allocation and information filtering and enrichment activities in environments in which information is encountered in clusters; (b) information scent models, which address the identification of information value from proximal cues; and (c) information diet models, which address decisions about the selection and pursuit of information items. ACT-IF is instantiated as a production system model of people interacting with complex information technology.

[edit] Paper Information

Authors: Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card

Check out this paper at Information Foraging

This paper was published in Psychological Review, Vol 100, Num 4, 1999.

[edit] Keywords

Information Foraging, Information Scent, Website Design, Internet