Scent
 

Links should "smell" like what the user wants.
 

  • confidence before clicking the link
  • feeling closer to the answer afterwards


    • Pragmatic measure of information scent (Spool et al., 1998)

    1. Ask users before they click
        a) What they thought they would get
        b) How confident they were (on a -2 to +2 scale)

    2. Ask users after they click
        c) whether they were closer to the search goal (on a -2 to +2 scale)
        d) add the results from (b) and (c)
        e) add the results from (d) cumulatively

    The score of (e) is highly correlated with ultimate success. It should increase monotonously.

    Users are pretty good in predicting whether or not they came closer to their goal.
    They are notorously bad in predicting how far they are still away though.