Researching Serendipity in Digital Information Environments. Lori McCay-Peet
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Researching Serendipity in Digital Information Environments - Lori McCay-Peet страница 7

СКАЧАТЬ the startling, anomalous observation(s); that leads to

      • an unexpected, unpredictable outcome.

      These elements, thus, become the defining characteristics that separate the ordinary from the serendipitous.

Image

      Figure 1.1: Three ways serendipity happens.

      A digital information environment can be any piece of digital technology that enables a “sense of place” and enables user interaction with information objects (McCay-Peet, Toms, and Kelloway, 2014). This may be any software application, from desktop to the Web. How does this environment differ from those in which we typically discuss serendipity? Most examples from science and engineering described earlier deal with human interactions with physical objects that have visually revealing characteristics, e.g., mold, burrs, floppy ears, burning rubber. When the anomalous or unexpected observation occurs in a two-dimensional digital space such as a computer, tablet or phone display, those anomalous and unexpected cues emanate from a combination of text, icons, images and sounds that make up an information object, and thus must be cognitively interpreted. There are (at present) no tangible tactile elements in a digital environment. In this volume, it is this digital environment in which we explore serendipity.

      In the remainder of the volume we consider the motivation for researching serendipity, and the value and implications for doing so. In Chapter 2, we examine why it is pertinent and timely to study serendipity. In Chapter 3, we deconstruct the concept of serendipity, and consider its use and interpretation, e.g., as an event, a behavior, a process, an outcome. In Chapter 4, we consider how to facilitate it in digital environments, answering the question can we design for serendipity. In Chapters 5 and 6, we look at how various methods have been deployed to study it and how it has been or could be assessed when it has occurred. We end the book with a reflection of the research to date and a framework for explaining the concept, thus providing a basis for future research.

      1 This is the English translation of the comment made in French: “a Dans les champs de l’observation le hazard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.”

      CHAPTER 2

       What Drives Serendipity Research?

      Reasons for examining the phenomenon of serendipity have evolved and grown over the past 25 years. Rapid technological change has provided both impetus and inspiration for serendipity research that examines how people adopt, adapt to, use, and, in turn, influence digital environments and how to design them to better support serendipity in the context of learning, everyday life, business, scholarship, law, and leisure, to name a few. The purpose of this chapter is to gather the main drivers of serendipity research, which point to responses to the proverbial “so what?” question.

      Figure 2.1: Six main drivers of serendipity research relating to digital information environments.

      We identified six main, overlapping drivers of serendipity research relating to digital information environments (Figure 2.1).

      • Physical vs. digital: Compare serendipity-related benefits of digital and physical interactions or mimic characteristics of physical environments to support serendipity in digital environments.

      • Information overload: Develop digital environments that enable users to encounter triggers of serendipitous experiences in the face of information overload.

      • Filter bubbles: Burst “filter bubbles” through novel approaches to support serendipity.

      • User experience: Understand and foster the positive experiences associated with serendipity to benefit individuals, groups, networks, and society.

      • User strategies: Identify how users may increase opportunities for serendipity through their information behavior or frame of mind in their interactions with digital environments.

      • Understanding the phenomenon: Gain a theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of serendipity.

      Although not always explicitly stated in the research, these six drivers are tied to even broader incentives: the implications of support for serendipity reverberate politically, socially, economically, and technologically through serendipity’s relationship to, for example, learning, community building, and innovation. In the conclusion of this chapter we both summarize the research drivers and suggest others to which it has yet to turn its attention.

      While the separation between “offline” and “online” or “virtual world” and “real world” networks and communities has become increasingly blurred, and arguments against the very existence of a division were proposed more than 10 years ago (e.g., Wellman, 2004), the qualities of interaction among people, information, and objects differ in physical vs. digital environments. The serendipitous sociocognitive microenvironment (Merton and Barber, 2004) needs, at the very least, some massaging when considering the relatively recent shift from physical to digital. Since the 1990s, research has examined how interactions with people and information differ in physical vs. digital environments and whether the positive, serendipitous aspects of physical environment may be mimicked or augmented through our interactions with digital environments.

      Discussion relating to the shift from physical to digital and its implications on serendipity and how digital can either replace or enhance our physical interactions is evident, for example, in relation to the shift from physical to digital photography, in approaches to humanities research, and the development of collaborative work environments. Research has sought to find ways in which digital photographs may be remembered and shared as easily, or perhaps more so, than their physical counterparts (Frohlich, Wall, and Kiddle, 2013; Nunes, Greenberg, and Neustaedter, 2009). Findings relating to serendipity in the humanities suggest unease over the shift from physical to digital source materials, although Verhoeven and de Costa (2014) note that this may dissipate with time through new methodological approaches and technological changes. Currently, however, among historians, research suggests that while more and more artifacts and manuscripts are becoming digitally accessible, there is apprehension that the shift from physical books to eBooks may reduce opportunity for serendipity rather than support it (Quan-Haase and Martin, 2012; Martin and Quan-Haase, 2013, 2016). In serendipity research relating to work or enterprise, the emphasis is often on co-workers’ information-rich interactions with each other and how the phenomenon may be facilitated by enabling informal online communication (e.g., Guy et al., 2015; Whittaker, Frohlich, and Daly-Jones, 1994). We focus in the remainder of this section on the work or enterprise area of research where the motivation for serendipity research has a distinctly physical vs. digital perspective: Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW).

      Early CSCW research СКАЧАТЬ