The information flaneur: a fresh look at information seeking

We introduce the information flaneur as a new human-centred view on information seeking that is grounded in interdisciplinary research. We use the metaphor of the urban flaneur making sense of a city as an inspiring lens that brings together diverse perspectives. These perspectives shift information seeking towards a more optimistic outlook: the information flaneur represents curious, creative, and critical information seeking. The resulting information-seeking model conceptualizes the interrelated nature between information activities and experiences as a continuum between horizontal exploration and vertical immersion. Motivated by enabling technological trends and inspired by the information flaneur, we present explorability as a new guiding principle for design and raise research challenges regarding esentation of information abstractions and details. Author Keywords Information seeking, human-computer interaction, flaneur. ACM Classification Keywords H.5.2 Information Interf...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Marian Dörk, Sheelagh Carpendale, Carey Williamson
• Keywords: Centred View, CHI 2011, Human Computer Interaction, Research Challenges