Students use of search engines -Reply

[Elisabeth Roche]

Someone asked me last month what I thought about frames. I said, I don't
think I like them, everything's *way too organized*.

But I thought about what I had said, just what is it that is driving me
crazy about frames? 

Besides the obvious problems trying to get around them.

Page I encountered, a company selling the ISP and WWW services, had an image
frame that was zoomed out I'd say, and the informational pages were
underneath it but their button to link was *just* out of reach of this
totally obscuring Image in a box, trying to "animate."

I was very bugged, there is something more to my dislike of frames than just
the heat.:))

I kept my eyes open to find out what was bothering me. 

Might be everything is looking so much the same I can't stay awake.

?(~~ dear, can we rent a tape tonite? Maybe 84 Charing Cross Road?")?

Today! Illumination.

We didn't get a Sunday newspaper and that has the TV guide in it. So
guideless I turned on the cable tv listings to see what might be on in the
next hour.

I stood speechless as I watched the frame at the top run the action ads for
whatever show, and the endlessly scrolling, tedious, slow, list of channels
and their current status.

Look! The Jones Cable tv guide looks exactly like every page I've seen using
frames.

So, which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Phooey and "off with their heads."

Elisabeth Roche ace at opus1.com
serendipity RULES!




Next, "I don't see what I got." (They often just do not see the postings 
on the screen--a kind of screen blindness effect.  The screens are highly 
organized and THE MOST prominent thing is often an advertisement that 
has, of course, nothing to do with the search, so they wonder aloud, 
"what's this doing here?", and miss the postings.)


At 12:33 PM 6/5/96 -0700, Diane Nahl wrote:
>I am currently involved in a study of how students use web search 
>engines.  Twenty undergrads without any web or Internet experience are in 
>a summer social psychology course that uses the web as its focus.  The 
>students have to put up home pages and deposit all of their assignments 
>there, etc.  I will have detailed information from the sstudents on their 
>particular experience using search engines.
>
>Some preliminary observations on novices learning Web search engines:
>
>The first problem novices encounter is "what is a search engine?"
>
>Next, "What are these things?" (On a page listing the various engines it 
>isn't clear that each one is a link to a certain search engine.)
>
>Next, "how do I choose one?" from a list of them (Netscape's list or a 
>longer list I maintain, or other available lists).
>
>Next, "what do I type?" (The conceptual analysis problem, natural 
>language problem, etc.)
>
>Next, "I don't see what I got." (They often just do not see the postings 
>on the screen--a kind of screen blindness effect.  The screens are highly 
>organized and THE MOST prominent thing is often an advertisement that 
>has, of course, nothing to do with the search, so they wonder aloud, 
>"what's this doing here?", and miss the postings.)
>
>Next, "What are these things?" (The default description is not clear 
>enough as to what it is going to be about, so is it relevant?)
>
>Next, "Why is this stuff here?"  "What does this have to do with  the 
>topic?" (Their search terms were too broad, narrow, numerous; they did 
>not select any options to control the precision; they did not see the 
>options at all--screen blindness; they did not look for options; they did 
>not think about how to describe their topic for the search; they 
>extracted words directly from the topic statement they chose; they did 
>not explore any links in the retrieved set to see what it it about and 
>how it might relate, or not, to their topic,etc.)
>
>If there is interest, I will summarize the findings for this list after 
>the analysis is complete later this summer.
>
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