A situated cognition aware approach to the design of information retrieval systems for geospatial data

Motivation - To improve the process of information retrieval (IR), specifically for geospatial data, by accounting for the natural processes of situated cognition where knowledge is a product of both action and context. Research approach - To focus on a specific topic (Mexican history), evaluate the limitations of existing approaches and design/implement a new system that overcomes these limitations. Findings/Design - As the theory situated cognition stipulatesall knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts. It was found that the knowledge produced by information retrieval can be situated in the activity of exploring search results and bound to the context of geographic location (specifically, place names). In the design of our new application this made it important to allow the user to be able to have place-names for towns and cities visible throughout the search process. Research limitations/Implications - Tests were only undertaken with Mexicans living in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca with data about Mexican events, hence results may be culturally specific or specific to users from countries with a particular geography. Originality/Value - The results of this research should be of interest to designers of interactive maps and those who attempting to apply the theory of situated cognition to application design. Take away message - Taking account for the context in which users want to view the results of searches can improve the usability of IR applications. Specifically, this is demonstrated for geographic data where maintaining the visibility of placenames makes results generally more valuable.