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In 2007, as part of a research project called Campus-HITS (Campus Health Information Tailoring System) (Tara, 2007), we decided to build a model to use it later as basis to design a health information portal and a health information search engine. These two health information applications were particularly destined to reach the students at the University of Victoria (www.uvic.ca). Very early in the process, we encountered one substantial question, as our first research question: How far we should go within the tailoring process? In other words, how close we should get to the students’ set of needs and wants and, how much would the degree of this tailoredness affect the effectiveness of the information provision attempt?
To answer the above question, we reviewed literature for evidence supporting the effectiveness of information tailoring activities, as explained below.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Applicational Usability (in Information Artifact): Those matters of human-computer interaction that affects the use of the application, and thus quality of access to the information content.
Literal Usability (in Information Artifact): The comparative match between the literacy of the composed content and the literacy level of the information artifact.
Information: The factual, objective, and non-judgmental composition of data pieces.
Information Tailoring: A purpose or person-based information provision process during which information contents are composed and packed according to either a particular purpose or a particular list of users’ needs/wants.
Knowledge: A judgmental/analytic/conclusional statement about something or somebody by processing collected pieces of concerning information in human brain.
Tailored Information Artifact (TIA): Any electronic presentable version of the information content whose topic, content, and presentation match the preferences of the target individual/s.
Information Provision: A process within which information is provided to users or users’ community without any individualization of content or purpose-specialization of the information or the delivery process.