A presentation summarising the Fun Info Interaction group at Dagstuhl, from the Evaluating Information Retrieval event. October 2013

1. Searching for fun…

2. Searching for fun…
Searching which is fun…

3. Searching for fun…
Searching which is fun…
Searching…

4. Searching for fun…
Searching which is fun…
Searching…
Interacting with information,
which is fun…

5. Searching for fun…
Searching which is fun…
Searching…
Interacting with information,
which is fun…
Fun Information Interaction
(not finding fun things)

6. Searching for fun…
Searching which is fun…
Searching…
Interacting with information,
which is fun…
Fun Information Interaction
(not finding fun things)
Just to be clear on terms/expectations

7. Prior Work
 ‘Entertain Me’ workshop - how does a system know how?
- context, profile, etc
- SIGIR Forum Report
- also covered some same issues
 Searching4Fun 2012
- when IIR is your fun activity
- to relax, cheer up, be not bored
- Elsweiler et al Book Chapter
 WWW Appification Workshop - not sure what happened here
 Context Track TREC
- from Entertain Me workshop
 1-click NTCIR Track
-?

8. Fun Info Interaction includes
 Online window shopping with nothing to buy
 Reading online, like reading fiction or hobby reading
 Watching funny videos
 Finding funny pictures
 Reading the news online
 But maybe also examples of more traditional information needs
 But perhaps where not finding a result doesn’t matter
 The process can still waste time, pique interest, be fun

9. Casual Leisure Info Behaviour
Elsweiler, Wilson, and Kirkegaard Lunn. "Understanding Casual-Leisure Information
Behaviour.” in New Directions in Information Behaviour. Eds: Spink & Heinstrom (2011): 211.

10. Leisure Taxonomy
Stebbins, Robert A. "Leisure and Its Relationship to Library
and: Information Science: Bridging the Gap." Library trends
57.4 (2009): 618-631.
 Serious Leisure – relates to life-long interests/hobbies/commitments
 Often invokes ‘work tasks’ outside of work
 Project Leisure – Booking a holiday, etc.
 Like ‘work tasks’ actually
 Casual Leisure – Playing, having fun, relaxing, etc
 Very unlike work tasks, but leads to searching
 Goals are state based, hedonic, etc
 Can involve information needs, or wants, or not

11. Why is this important for IR Eval?
 It changes our assumptions about searching (and browsing, and
whatever that involves finding things)
 This changes our criteria, and thus our interpretations of measures
 Stopping means running out of things to find
 Finding a good result, may be reason to continue (not stop)
 More time can be good
 There might be familiar places and results to find
 But they might want new directions from there
 Novelty and Repetition might be equally important

12. Criteria from Theories
 The Theory of Flow
- how immersed you are with a system
- and forget outside world
 Good Engagement levels
 Avoiding bad disengagement
 Avoid over-engagement (e.g. disappointment of missing a bus)
 State Change (process & outcome)
 Bored to not bored, Stressed to not stressed, Sad to happy
 <state to escape> to <desired state> (via <transforming state>)
 Stressed to relaxed via horrified and surprised
 Cognitive Load (or Mental Workload)
 Is low good for de-stressing?
 Is high good for being not-bored?
 Cognitive Absorption

13. Its Difficult to Study
 Simulated Work Tasks – designed to build to intrinsic motivation
 Create real consequence, etc
 Casual-leisure Needs – are by nature intrinsic
 Hard to create in experimental conditions
 How create real consequence? (when sometimes not a consequence)
 Make participants bored – so they naturally entertain themselves
 Make participants stressed – so they try to relax
(Dubious ethics)
 Make participants sad – so they try to get happy?

14. Implications for Systems
 O’Brien’s engagement work shows that media, more text in
results, and links for chaining behaviour are valuable
 Lalmas recent work on engagement to consider
 Vakkari’s fiction finding shows the results page (not search
function) had the biggest impact
 Manage novelty/repetition in sequences of interaction
 Explore/Exploit

15. Open Questions for FII IR Eval
 Is this just visceral needs? (Taylor, 1962)
 Rather than conscious information needs
 How does this relate to things like serendipity?
 Are there gaming measures that are relevant?
 There are gaming evaluation papers at CHI
 Can we have FII within Serious and Project leisure?
 Can systems optimise systems for FII behaviour?
 Can you detect certain state-change targets?
 Bored to not-bored, stressed to relax, etc
 How do different demographics differ?
 How is the journey more important than the objects found

16. Current Challenges for IR Eval of FII
 Actually studying fun information interaction in action
 Discover more scenarios/contexts
 What are successful FII strategies
 Are there strategies for this?
 Correlating system interactions with study findings
 Determining measures from Fun Information Interaction
 Designing RAT interaction models that relate to FII
 Create systems that increase engagement
 Identify ways systems can support FII

17. Moving forward
 Challenges and open questions out there
 Another workshop at this more IIR/IS level?
 Its been a couple of years since Searching4Fun at ECIR
 Perhaps at IIiX2014 in Regensburg