Interaction with an enabling information retrieval system: Modeling the userʹs decoding and encoding operations

With new interactive technology, we can increase user satisfaction by designing information retrieval systems that inform the user while the user is on-line interacting with the system. The purpose of this article is to model the information processing operations of a generic user who has just received an informative message from the system and is stimulated by the message into grasping at a higher understanding of his or her information task or problem. The model consists of three levels, each of which forms a separate subsystem. In the Perception subsystem, the user perceives the system message in a visual sense; in the Comprehension subsystem, the user must comprehend the system message; and in the Application subsystem, the user must (a) interpret the system message in terms of the userʹs task at hand, and (b) create and send a new message back to the system to complete the interaction. Because of the information process stimulated by the interaction, the userʹs new message forms a query to the system that more accurately represents the userʹs information need than would have been the case if the interaction had not taken place. This article proposes a device to enable clarification of the userʹs task, and thus his/her information need at the Application subsystem level of the model.