Personalization is not a panacea: balancing serendipity and personalization in medical news content delivery

Authors:
Xiangyu Fan;Javed Mostafa;Ketan Mane;Cassidy Sugimoto
Affiliations:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA;University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA;University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA;Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA
Venue:
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGHIT International Health Informatics Symposium
Year:
2012

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Abstract

Personalization is viewed as a potential solution to the "information overload" problem. In contrast, serendipity is a natural part of human information seeking process that can lead to unexpected and useful discoveries. It appears both serendipity and personalization are important. However, it remains unclear how these modes of interaction impact content retrieval and consumption. To empirically analyze the influence of personalization and serendipity on information retrieval, a medical news information system named MedSIFTER was developed. The system can personalize the presentation of news articles based on users' interest profiles. Using a control variable, built into the system, MeSIFTER's personalization level can be modulated, ranging from high to low (or zero). In this study, based on MedlinePlus as main information source, three different system modalities were compared (zero, low, and high levels of personalization). The experimental analysis engaged three different user groups, over a four week period. Strong evidence of serendipity was found across all three user groups, independent of the level of personalization. Users also appeared to be uniformly satisfied regardless of the level of personalization.