Examination of online information search stopping behaviors and stopping rules by task type

This poster aims to understand how task type could influence when people would stop searching and what stopping rules people would use in the following three stopping behaviors: query stopping, read stopping, and task stopping during online information search. We conducted a pilot user experiment with four participants; each performed two different types of search tasks. The results show two different patterns of stopping behavior on well‐structured and decomposable tasks and poorly structured and indecomposable tasks: sequential mode, and simultaneous mode; and people use different stopping rules in three stopping behaviors.