The Relationship between User Perception and User Behaviour in Interactive Information Retrieval Evaluation

Measures of user behaviour and user perception have been used to evaluate interactive information retrieval systems. However, there have been few efforts taken to understand the relationship between these two. In this paper, we investigated both using user actions from log files, and the results of the User Engagement Scale, both of which came from a study of people interacting with a novel interface to an image collection, but with a non-purposeful task. Our results suggest that selected behavioural actions are associated with selected user perceptions (i.e., focused attention, felt involvement, and novelty), while typical search and browse actions have no association with aesthetics and perceived usability. This is a novel finding that can lead toward a more systematic user-centered evaluation.