The development of a conceptual framework for understanding people's requirements for an information service.

The aim of this research was to see whether a conceptual framework could be developed
that would help conduct:
• studies of people's interaction with information;
• user requirements analysis for information services and systems.
The following questions were addressed:
• could the accumulated past research in user studies and information seeking
behaviour now provide a good basis for the development of a conceptual
framework for understanding people's interaction with data, information and
knowledge and
• whether a conceptual framework could be developed that:
~ indicated those factors that influence the individual's interaction with
information
~ indicated and helped explain those factors that influence each other and the
individual's experience when interacting with information and information
systems
~ helped to derive data that enabled the researcher to identify user requirements
for an infonnation system that relates to their needs
and also whether:
• the conceptual framework would help to identify an appropriate research
methodology and techniques for studying people and determining their
requirements for information services and systems?
As a result of the research a framework, that encompassed earlier models and
frameworks, was developed. The framework evolved through an inductive analysis of
the literature and was then applied to two communities. This led to modification of the
framework. The resulting framework, and the levels of analysis that were considered
significant, identified categories of data that were important and indicated the
relationships between these variables. The communities were postgraduate students and
informal carers. Insights were generated into the information experience of the two
conununities and their requirements for an infonnation service. With regard to
methodology and techniques it was concluded that, although the framework did help to
identify the data that one can collect, many techniques, such as observation or task
analysis can be applied and are likely to vary, depending on the research context.
However certain techniques were shown to be more effective than others for gathering
different types of data, such as behvioural or psychological.