Host Organisation: University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

Searching and foraging for information require many different types of interactions to find the relevant material - each interaction comes at a cost to the user, and may or may not provide some benefit. By modelling how people search using economic theory it is possible to provide deeper insights into how and why people adopt particular search strategies over others - and to identify where the system or interface can be improved to improve the search experience. The main objectives of this project will be:

• To develop a number of models of user search behaviour grounded by economic theory;
• To hypothesise and predict user search behaviour given these models, and
• To empirically evaluate and validate the models in lab based experiments and live environments.

The expected outcomes of this project include developing a series of mathematical models representing the economics of interaction a range of different tasks/domains in DoSSIER. The project will generate predictions and testable hypotheses regarding how people's search behaviour will change in these different contexts. The project is expected to provide new insights into how users interact, and new models that provide a concise and compact representation of user interaction and search behaviour along with design guidelines for researchers and practitioners.