A STUDY OF USER PERFORMANCE AND ATTITUDES WITH INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL INTERFACES

This article reports on a project undertaken to compare the behavior o f two types of users with two types of information retrieval interface s. The user types were search process specialists; acid subject matter domain specialists with no prior online database search experience. T he interfaces were native DIALOG, which uses a procedural language, an d OAK, a largely menu-based, hence nonprocedural language interface co mmunicating with DIALOG. Three types of data were recorded: logs autom atically recorded by computer monitoring of all searches, results of s tructured interviews with subjects at the time of the searches, and re sults of focus group discussions after all project tasks were complete d. The type of user was determined by a combination of prior training, objective in searching, and subject domain knowledge. Our results sho w that the type of interface does affect performance and that users ad apt their behavior to interfaces differently. Different combinations o f search experience and domain knowledge will lead to different behavi or in use of an information retrieval system. Different kinds of users can best be served with different kinds of interfaces.