Research On Internet Users’ Information Behavior Of Image Retrieval

User behavior has been one of primary research branches in the field of information science, which is concerned with varied studies such as information property, information transmission mode, values as well as function, structure and tool systems of information science. Image retrieval is the mainstream way for the future visual information services. Thus the related technological development, resources organization and interface design should be faced with visual information users and develop targeting methods and technologies for design and services for users. To promote the study on information needs, searching and browsing strategies and models, psychological mechanism with regard to visual retrieval will contribute to effectively get over the practices which focus on much more economic&technological efficiency than users efficiency in visual information systems, which is helpful to improve the service quality and utilization effects of image retrieval systems. The systematic study on user behavior characters and laws will input fresh blood into user behavior theory and provide more bases from the user’s view for multimedia information management.Based on the fundamental views of mingled information needs-information searching theory, the dissertation is closely centered on user information requirement and information retrieval process in image retrieval, preliminarily analyses and studies series issues as the characters and laws of image retrieval requirement, behavior and tendency of image retrieval, strategy and mode in image retrieval process.The theoretical foundation of this dissertation is mainly on the accumulated theories and methodologies in user behavior research field including user-centered research paradigm, Wilson’s information-seeking behavior model, expression of user information needs, theoretical models of information seeking process, theoretical characterizations of information seeking strategies, and so on.Specifically, there are four items of work in that regards:The first part is about the framework of user behavior study for image retrieval. The article investigates key results and ideas in the study at home and abroad, outlines the "inverse pyramid" framework for image retrieval behavior studies, and reveals the study development, characteristics, contents, topic distributions and research ideas in this field, all these results can be direct instructions for related domestic studies.The second part is the investigation on image retrieval request and behavior customs. In perspective of daily activities, by way of structural questionnaire, the article surveys the requirements, customs and retrieval experiences in image retrieval activities by representative Internet user groups (in-campus college students), acquires some results in retrieval requirement contents, requirement level, behavior customs and behavior ability by the college students.The third part is about user behavior strategy. User experiment is designed in which user’s image retrieval process was recorded by way of behavior investigation technology, comprehensively quantified and qualified data to analyze the user retrieval behavior, and described the behavior strategy of users in daily image retrieval activities in various perspectives. The various perspectives are covering selection and change of retrieval entrance; page flip activity in retrieval, relevance judgment, and common behavior modes and so on. The article studied users’ outstanding psychological factors, behavior characteristics and tactics such as high-frequency behavior modes, which users employ when seeking images on the Web.The forth part is around the description and adjustment of image request which is centered on three issues:structure of image query for image retrieval, linguistic distribution characters of image query, dynamic reformulation of image query in process, and obtains series of behavior regular patterns in issues as image query structure basis, targets and channels; length of the query, utilization of retrieval grammars, query reformulation sequence mode. The article observes the expression way of image information needs, discusses the evolution of image searching state, and sums up some query reformulation strategies and modes.The technological route for this dissertation is along the study on documents, user questionnaire investigation and users experiment to progressively carry out theoretical and practical studies. The study is based on achievements and failures from predecessors and is established for research on image retrieval user behavior, which is inheriting as well as creative in both theories and practices.At the end of the article, some application suggestions in the current image retrieval services are put forward from three aspects, i.e., user interfaces, image information resources organization and image semantic retrieval.