A human-centered design and evaluation framework for information search.

Information search in a distributed environment is an interactive process between the user and the artifact. How the information is distributed across the user and the artifact determines the efficacy of information search. Using a human-centered method, UFuRT, we developed an information search model and a taxonomy of search tasks. Further, we developed prototypes to investigate the relationship between search tasks and interface types. Preliminary results of analysis reveal the requirement of distributed information for search tasks and help understand the complexity of the tasks in different types of interfaces.