Joe Lamantia.com

In an ear­lier post­ing titled Goal Based Infor­ma­tion Retrieval, I reviewed four modes of infor­ma­tion retrieval that my team iden­ti­fied as address­ing user goals in a broader and more effec­tive fash­ion than the sim­ple query and response search­ing com­mon today.
In this follow-up, I’ll share a set of 10 poten­tially reusable infor­ma­tion retrieval pat­terns that describe the ways users com­bine and switch modes to meet goals: Each pat­tern is assem­bled from com­bi­na­tions of the same four modes. We found these pat­terns while ana­lyz­ing and inter­pret­ing user research on the goals and behav­iors of a wide vari­ety of users active within a large infor­ma­tion envi­ron­ment. This envi­ron­ment pro­vides com­plex finan­cial ser­vices con­tent and capa­bil­i­ties through a product-based user expe­ri­ence that requires a costly sub­scrip­tion. This par­tic­u­lar set of pat­terns emerged from a mix of user research gath­ered using ethnog­ra­phy, con­tex­tual analy­sis, cog­ni­tive walk­through, and heuris­tics review, in addi­tion to straight for­ward inter­views with users.
The four modes we found for our users were: seek­ing, vis­it­ing sta­ble des­ti­na­tions, mon­i­tor­ing, and receiv­ing deliv­ered infor­ma­tion (full def­i­n­i­tions avail­able in the orig­i­nal arti­cle). Each mode empha­sizes a dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tion of lower or higher lev­els of user activ­ity to obtain infor­ma­tion, and greater or lesser sta­bil­ity of the set­tings users encounter.
The pat­terns iden­tify con­sis­tent com­bi­na­tions and sequences of the infor­ma­tion retrieval modes that users employ while under­tak­ing goals.
We’ve sug­gested names to cap­ture the fla­vor for the ten pat­terns we found:

• Seeker
• Reg­u­lar Customer
• Explorer
• Ini­tial Subscriber
• Vig­i­lant Subscriber
• Sky­diver
• Watch­dog
• Returned Expa­tri­ate
• Vig­i­lant Customer
• Curi­ous Subscriber

To make the pat­terns eas­ier to under­stand, the illus­tra­tions and descrip­tions below show the dif­fer­ent modes that make up each pat­tern.
Seeker, Reg­u­lar Cus­tomer, Explorer Pat­terns

Seeker
The Seeker is look­ing for some­thing. Once found, the Seeker goes else­where to accom­plish other goals.
Reg­u­lar Cus­tomer
The Reg­u­lar Cus­tomer vis­its the same destination(s) con­sis­tently for the same rea­sons. Then the Reg­u­lar Cus­tomer real­izes they can save the time and effort of vis­it­ing, and switches modes to have the things they need deliv­ered directly to them.
Explorer
The Explorer is learn­ing about a new (or changed) envi­ron­ment; explor­ing it’s struc­ture, con­tents, laws, etc. The Explorer may do this for their own pur­poses, or for oth­ers.
Ini­tial Sub­scriber, Vig­i­lant Sub­scriber Pat­terns

Ini­tial Sub­scriber
The Ini­tial Sub­scriber seeks what is needed, finds the things needed, goes to their location(s), and then chooses to have these things deliv­ered to allow them to seek other things.
Vig­i­lant Sub­scriber
The Vig­i­lant Sub­scriber makes effec­tive use of mon­i­tor­ing and deliv­ery, fol­lowed up with vis­i­ta­tion of des­ti­na­tions, to ensure they do not miss out on any­thing that might be use­ful to them within the envi­ron­ment.
Sky­diver, Watch­dog, Returned Expa­tri­ate Pat­terns

Sky­diver
The Sky­diver makes a bold entrance from out­side the envi­ron­ment, and lands pre­cisely on tar­get.
Watch­dog
The Watch­dog first finds things, and then places them under care­ful watch.
Returned Expa­tri­ate
The Returned Expa­tri­ate was away, and is back again. They begin by revis­it­ing known places, then seek out what has changed, mon­i­tor changes for a while, and even­tu­ally begin to have valu­able things deliv­ered.
Vig­i­lant Cus­tomer, Curi­ous Sub­scriber Pat­terns

Vig­i­lant Cus­tomer
The Vig­i­lant Cus­tomer comes by often, but wants to be sure, and so mon­i­tors things from afar for a while before decid­ing deliv­ery is more effec­tive.
Curi­ous Sub­scriber
The Curi­ous Sub­scriber has things deliv­ered reg­u­larly, but vis­its all the same to see what else may be avail­able. And just to be sure, they seek out the things they sus­pect are here, but can­not see imme­di­ately.
Reusing Modes and Pat­terns
Reuse is rare in the realm of user expe­ri­ence and infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture. The infor­ma­tion retrieval modes we iden­ti­fied are inde­pen­dent of user role, per­sona, or user type. As a result, the pat­terns assem­bled from those modes are also inde­pen­dent of the same con­tex­tual fac­tors. Since the modes and pat­terns are not tied to spe­cific fea­tures, func­tion­al­ity, or infor­ma­tion struc­tures, this would seem to indi­cate that modes and pat­terns may resuable in dif­fer­ent envi­ron­ments for user pop­u­la­tions pur­su­ing sim­i­lar root goals.
I hope mode-based pat­terns like these offer some level of reusabil­ity. To that end, I am curi­ous about where and how they help define infor­ma­tion retrieval expe­ri­ences for other types of users and other domains.
If you use them, send me a note about where, when, and how.