The information flaneur: a fresh look at information seeking

We introduce the information flaneur as a new human-centred view on information seeking that is grounded in interdisciplinary research. We use the metaphor of the urban flaneur making sense of a city as an inspiring lens that brings together diverse perspectives. These perspectives shift information seeking towards a more optimistic outlook: the information flaneur represents curious, creative, and critical information seeking. The resulting information-seeking model conceptualizes the interrelated nature between information activities and experiences as a continuum between horizontal exploration and vertical immersion. Motivated by enabling technological trends and inspired by the information flaneur, we present explorability as a new guiding principle for design and raise research challenges regarding the representation of information abstractions and details.

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