Interaction with an enabling information retrieval system: Modeling the user's 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 user's 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 user's new message forms a query to the system that more accurately represents the user's 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 user's task, and thus his/her information need at the Application subsystem level of the model.