Information foraging and Sensemaking
By: Rohan Sandeep
Tags: Information Foraging, UX, https://irwinkwan.com/tag/information-foraging-theory/

Information foraging theory is based on the analogy of an animal deciding what to eat, where it can be found, the best way to obtain it and how much “energy” (how filling) the meal will (be) provide.

Information foraging helps users drown out the noise and tune in the signal. But finding relevant information is only half of the equation; users must also make sense of what they encounter.

Sensemaking describes the process through which how newer sets of insights are merged with existing knowledge and information.

Sensemaking explains how information seekers go about foraging for information, extracting relevant concepts, and encoding that information into semantic memory while gaining insights along the way (Pirolli and Card, 2005). There are four stages to this process: the first two overlap with information foraging, and the second two are unique to sensemaking.

Researchers at PARC (Card, Pirolli and other team members), while designing computers systems borrowed and researched the process adopted by our ancestors and animal kingdom in general when looking for food.

What does Informations scent and foraging, have to do with Experience design and User experience?

Animals foraging for food using scents

The broad design principles and interfaces that evolved from there, provide us a understanding of how this was put together and generally also on how to design interfaces further.

How would humans do it, seeking information on a device or screen, that meets thier end goal. Interfaces being heavily visual, Cues tend to be in visual modes. That is for foraging, which is largely on existing knowledge sets.

Information Foraging knowledge theory is great for fields in persuassive design — such as ecommerce, hotel booking etc.

Sense-making on the other hand arms us with knowledge that we can utilize to broaden the scope of experience design components. This would have an impact of how newer experiences and components are created and analyzed.

How do you design better for Information foraging (leaning on existing knowledge)

In persuassive design user attention span matters a lot, it matters a lot that users do not abandon what you are selling and provide enough value for the user to make a decision. Here are some of the things we should avoid, if we have to ensure that the existing knowledge of user — does not become a reason for abandoning an activity, we would like user to perform.

Inspired by the article by Jared Spool from UI, on Designing for scent of information.

(Missed Scents) Iceberg Syndrome: a lot of content is often hidden beneath choices users have to make. Very often the most critical information or value lies beneath folds of information. While users have choice, they tend to abandon sites, that do not provide information upfront, or provide information where a lot of scrolling is needed.

Antidote: Design information in a inverted pyramid method. Summate the most information ahead.

(Missed Scents) Mismatch in navigational affordance: In creative fields, its common to try different approaches to navigation and linking. You could link information using images, through UI elements. It is likely that users are not able to figure it out and miss the important part of the user journeys.

Antidote: Pressure test any interface and navigational elements. if possible provide multiple methods to achieve the same tasks. For example: both links and images.

(Not Food) Banner Blindness: A common phenomenon supported by eye tracking studies states that users are likely to avoid any content areas, that are typically used for advertisements and which do not contain value. In pre-2010 days, it was common to have large banners in websites (still is?), users would avoid these banners. On the other hand, sites like Google which provide links in the same styling as advertising content, have a higher click through rate.

Antidote: Better value and contextual value, adds the likely hood of usage by the end users.

(Not Food) Forming the wrong scents: User is likely to avoid interface elements and sites, that do not provide the information they seek. If we encountered a website that promised information about a subject, but on visiting if we find different information, or no information, we are likely to avoid these sites, and in most probability even sections with similar styling.

Some information features are connected to links. In web pages, links are usually located in particular places, are coloured differently, and are sometimes underlined when you mouse over them. These features are called cues. A predator can use these cues to try to predict the value of the information on the other side of a link.

Irkwin Kwan — https://irwinkwan.com/tag/information-foraging-theory/

(Not Food) Consistency: It is common for us to arrive at a page from a search through a keyword. On reaching if you find it, to miss the keywords you used for search, the user is more likely to abandon the search on the site, and in all possibility miss the information.

So far this is about learnt experiences? what about developing new scents and methods.

Going back to the earlier part of the article. What is sense making?

Here are two examples, where sense-making and creating a new interaction paradigm might be of importance.

Example 1: Let’s take an example of a person who is building a product and there is no fixed website that provides all of the information in the single space for the different components that we would have to source.The user would have to visit multiple sites, compare information, compare prices and desirability and prepare a plan of action to be able to fully accomplish what is desired.

Example 2: What about an evolving social network site, that suddenly expands and newer components need to be developed. A post that has 1000 likes, and you need to prioritize, the end user who need to see something, the author who need to find relevant information, to stay hooked on to the network.

Sensemaking is the ability or attempt to make sense of an ambiguous situation. More exactly, sensemaking is the process of creating situational awareness and understanding in situations of high complexity or uncertainty in order to make decisions. It is “a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively

The process seems to include the following four stages,

(1) Search & Filter: Look for information you are seeking.

(2) Extract: Find relevant or related information.

(3) Schematize: Build a schema on how you found the information, and generalize for future use.

Here the search and filter, seem the most important part of the process. The user might notice a new paradigm and has to make sense of it.

In the social network example (Example 2), let’s assume it is about the popular pattern — ‘Rohan, Sunil and 3 more have liked’ on a picture that has been uploaded by the end user. Assume the user has noticed it for the first time. The sense making process will look back at the process and meaningfullness of this information. The familiarity, semantics and insights are all on play. It’s new, but it’s really something the user can understand — two familiar names — familiarity, the fact that 5 people have liked it — is insight and the fact that it comes together is symantics — a status of sorts for the picture that has been published. One of the outcomes might be to click and view more information, the other two be just updated with the information.

Clicking on the information, would be based on the same sense-making process. Is there any scent available, is it a hyperlink in , any icon that user is familiar with etc.

Enterprise or consumer worlds have different needs, but are united in the need to be aware on sense-making for creating new methods.

Some examples from enterprise design needs

Intranets: What role does information foraging play in Enterpise applications. It is common for us to forage information in wiki’s, intranets for information. Quite often unintentional or badly designed intranets end up with people spending more time, or not accomplishing the intended purpose of the end users.

Training: If we had an application where users would not be able to learn to put together the desired or required outcome. Training required to orient end-users to an application leads to high adoption, monetary and time based costs.

Missed effectiveness: If we had non-obvious possibilities, which are not discoverable or achievable by users due to lack of affordance. It would lead to decrease in intended effectiveness of the application. Image a stock market application, that has all the power-ess but does not provide insights or quick options to convert opportunities.

Articles and some snippets on Information Foraging

Information Foraging Theory: Interaction Design.org

The activity of getting at information has a cost (usually time) but consuming information from a source also has an associated value (how relevant or important the information is). After consuming some amount of information (which is called prey), the predator may decide that it’s no longer worth the predator’s time to continue processing that patch and the predator navigates away from the patch to a new one that is considered more valuable.

Do People Seek Information Like Animals Forage for Food? An Introduction to Information Foraging Theory

Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave Your Site Faster

Information Foraging: Science Direct

Stanford University: Information Foraging theory

Need to learn more..

I am in process of looking deeper into Enterprise design and Information foragging. It appears that a framework on understanding information foragging and structure might be of help for my future projects.