IR and Context-Ian Ruthven

Information Retrieval and Context

Ian Ruthven

Department of Computer and Information Sciences

University of Strathclyde

ir@cis.strath.ac.uk

Why context is important

• Our information activities take place within a context

For e.g. what we already know influences what we expect and how we assess information

• Context changes our expectations from searching

Different Views

• Socio-technical systems

Context is too complex

We can use context to explain but not predict

Instead system should support searcher reasoning about context

• Context sensitive computing

Context implies adaptation based on inputs/world model

Model of input - context helps system make more accurate decisions

e.g. location aware systems

Model of a situation – context describes state

e.g. query formulation vs scanning an index

• Model of a task – Context describes task

e.g. image retrieval vs shopping

Some contextual factors

• Technical e.g. availability of data, device (memory, screen size etc.)
• Physical e.g. location time etc.
• Social e.g. Environment, culture etc.
• Personal e.g. experiental, motivational, physical etc.
• Task e.g. novelty,complexity etc.

Contextual distinctions

• Objective context (e.g. location) vs Subjective context (e.g. affective states)
• Group based (e.g. collaborative filtering) vs Individual (e.g. personalization)
• Meaningful (e.g. language) vs Incidental (e.g. colour of the walls)
• Extrinsic (e.g. document use) vs Intrinsic (e.g. document type)
• Visible (e.g. MS Office Assistant) vs Hidden (e.g. relevance feedback)
• Rule-based (e.g. user models) vs Statistical-based (data mining)

Categories: ESSIR-2007