Social navigation for loosely-coupled information seeking in tightly-knit groups using webwear

  • Authors:

  • Scott S. Bateman;Carl A. Gutwin;Gordon I. McCalla

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island & University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada;University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada;University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Computer supported cooperative work
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

Many web-based information-seeking tasks are set in a social context where other people's knowledge and advice improves success in finding information. However, when tightly-knit contacts (friends, family, colleagues) are not available, information seeking becomes more difficult. Inspired by previous work in social navigation, we developed WebWear, a system that collects and displays traces of activity for tightly-knit groups. WebWear allows people to use contextual knowledge of contacts' interests and activities to interpret the meaning of the traces, improving their usefulness. In a comparative study, we found that WebWear helped people complete information-seeking tasks more accurately, without requiring additional effort. A one-week field trial found that WebWear was both usable and useful, and that privacy concerns were reduced in the small-group context. WebWear shows that small-scale social navigation systems are feasible, and that they can improve the effectiveness of information seeking on the World-Wide Web.