How Kids See Search: A Visual Analysis of Internet Search Engines

Through previous studies into children’s internet search practice, we have gained insight into the taught strategies, information behaviour, and common errors children experience while searching. This paper analyses the visual structure of commonly-used internet search engines (ISEs) to explore how the interface and interaction design of ISEs may influence the search practices of children. Common features of ISEs are identified and the effects of query construction techniques on the visual presentation of information are reported. We use our observations to provide guidelines for the design and development of ISEs for children.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Nicholas Vanderschantz

Hinze Annika

Conference

Publication date: July 2017

Publication date (Print): July 2017

Pages: 1-6

Affiliations

[0001]Department of Computer Science

The University of Waikato

New Zealand

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.84

SO-VID: 06f63e31-b8ba-4cec-98f3-0e8e3e5524ae

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 31st International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference (HCI 2017)

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 31

Conference location: Sunderland, UK

Conference date: 3 - 6 July 2017

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: digital make-believe, with delegates considering our expansive

History

Product

1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.84

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

reference

D. Bilal 2000 Children's use of the yahooligans! web search engine: I. cognitive, physical, and affective behaviors on fact-based search tasks Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 51 7 646 665
D. Bilal 2013 Comparing google's readability of search results to the flesch readability formulae: A preliminary analysis on children's search queries American Society for Information Science and Technology 50 1 1 9
G. BuscherE. CutrellM. R. Morris 2009 What do you see when you're surfing?: using eye tracking to predict salient regions of web pages SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems 21 30 ACM
A. De AngeliA. SutcliffeJ. Hartmann 2006 Interaction, usability and aesthetics: what influences users' preferences? In Designing Interactive systems 271 280 ACM
A. DruinB. BedersonB. Weeks et al 2003 The international children's digital library Technical Report CS-TR-4433 UMIACS University of Maryland
A. DruinE. FossH. HutchinsonE. GolubL. Hatley 2010 Children's roles using keyword search interfaces at home SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 413 422 ACM
S. Duarte TorresD. HiemstraP. Serdyukov 2010 An analysis of queries intended to search information for children Symposium on information interaction in context 235 244 ACM
T. GossenM. NitscheA. NÜrnberger 2012 Knowledge journey: A web search interface for young users Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval 1 ACM
G. HervetK. GuérardS. TremblayM. S. Chtourou 2011 Is banner blindness genuine? eye tracking internet text advertising Applied cognitive psychology 25 5 708 716
A. LingnauI. RuthvenM. LandoniF. Van Der Sluis 2010 Interactive search interfaces for young children-the puppyir approach Int. Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT) 389 390 IEEE
P. Moore 1995 Information problem solving: A wider view of library skills Contemporary educational psychology 20 1 1 31
M. MoshagenJ. MuschA. S. Goritz 2009 A blessing, not a curse: Experimental evidence for beneficial effects of visual aesthetics on performance Ergonomics 52 10 1311 1320
D. A. Norman 1983 Some observations on mental models Mental models 7 112 7 14
N. Tractinsky 2013 Visual aesthetics The encyclopaedia of Human Computer Interaction Interaction Design Foundation
F. van der SluisE. M. A. G. van Dijk 2010 A closer look at children's information retrieval usage: Towards child-centered relevance Workshop on Accessible Search Systems, at ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2010) 3 10
N. Vanderschantz 2016 KidsQuestions: Assisting children’s digital information seeking PhD thesis, Computer Science University of Waikato New Zealand
N. VanderschantzA. Hinze 2017a Do Internet Search Engines Support Children's Search Query Construction: A Visual Analysis Technical Report 02/2017 University of Waikato, Department of Computer Science
N. VanderschantzA. Hinze 2017b A study of children's search query formulation habits 2015 British HCI Conference ACM
N. VanderschantzA. HinzeS. J. Cunningham 2014a Current educational technology use for digital information acquisition by young new zealand children Australasian Computer Science Conference 125 134 ACS
N. VanderschantzA. HinzeS. J. Cunningham 2014b “Sometimes the internet reads the question wrong”: Children's search strategies & difficulties American Society for Information Science and Technology 51 1 1 10

Comments

Comment on this article

[1] D. Bilal 2000 Children's use of the yahooligans! web search engine: I. cognitive, physical, and affective behaviors on fact-based search tasks Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 51 7 646 665

[2] D. Bilal 2013 Comparing google's readability of search results to the flesch readability formulae: A preliminary analysis on children's search queries American Society for Information Science and Technology 50 1 1 9

[3] G. BuscherE. CutrellM. R. Morris 2009 What do you see when you're surfing?: using eye tracking to predict salient regions of web pages SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems 21 30 ACM

[4] A. De AngeliA. SutcliffeJ. Hartmann 2006 Interaction, usability and aesthetics: what influences users' preferences? In Designing Interactive systems 271 280 ACM

[5] A. DruinB. BedersonB. Weeks et al 2003 The international children's digital library Technical Report CS-TR-4433 UMIACS University of Maryland

[6] A. DruinE. FossH. HutchinsonE. GolubL. Hatley 2010 Children's roles using keyword search interfaces at home SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 413 422 ACM

[7] S. Duarte TorresD. HiemstraP. Serdyukov 2010 An analysis of queries intended to search information for children Symposium on information interaction in context 235 244 ACM

[8] T. GossenM. NitscheA. NÜrnberger 2012 Knowledge journey: A web search interface for young users Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval 1 ACM

[9] G. HervetK. GuérardS. TremblayM. S. Chtourou 2011 Is banner blindness genuine? eye tracking internet text advertising Applied cognitive psychology 25 5 708 716

[10] A. LingnauI. RuthvenM. LandoniF. Van Der Sluis 2010 Interactive search interfaces for young children-the puppyir approach Int. Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT) 389 390 IEEE

[11] P. Moore 1995 Information problem solving: A wider view of library skills Contemporary educational psychology 20 1 1 31

[12] M. MoshagenJ. MuschA. S. Goritz 2009 A blessing, not a curse: Experimental evidence for beneficial effects of visual aesthetics on performance Ergonomics 52 10 1311 1320

[13] D. A. Norman 1983 Some observations on mental models Mental models 7 112 7 14

[14] N. Tractinsky 2013 Visual aesthetics The encyclopaedia of Human Computer Interaction Interaction Design Foundation

[15] F. van der SluisE. M. A. G. van Dijk 2010 A closer look at children's information retrieval usage: Towards child-centered relevance Workshop on Accessible Search Systems, at ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR 2010) 3 10

[16] N. Vanderschantz 2016 KidsQuestions: Assisting children’s digital information seeking PhD thesis, Computer Science University of Waikato New Zealand

[17] N. VanderschantzA. Hinze 2017a Do Internet Search Engines Support Children's Search Query Construction: A Visual Analysis Technical Report 02/2017 University of Waikato, Department of Computer Science

[18] N. VanderschantzA. Hinze 2017b A study of children's search query formulation habits 2015 British HCI Conference ACM

[19] N. VanderschantzA. HinzeS. J. Cunningham 2014a Current educational technology use for digital information acquisition by young new zealand children Australasian Computer Science Conference 125 134 ACS

[20] N. VanderschantzA. HinzeS. J. Cunningham 2014b “Sometimes the internet reads the question wrong”: Children's search strategies & difficulties American Society for Information Science and Technology 51 1 1 10

Celebrating 65 years of The Computer Journal - free-to-read perspectives - bcs.org/tcj65