Reflections On The Research Methods Used In An Investigation Of Cross-Modal Collaborative Information Seeking

Evaluating collaborative information seeking can be challenging, often more than individual information seeking. This can be attributed to the complexity of the interaction as the study involves a number of users using the systems. While this is particularly important, but rather hard when the users employ different modalities accessing the systems. In this paper, we describe a semi-structured combination of qualitative and quantitative methods used to investigate visually impaired and sighted web users' collaborative information seeking behavior. We critically reflect on the benefits and limitations of the methods used, and discuss practical considerations in application of such methods in a cross-modal setting.