Last week our very own Dongho Choi successfully defended his dissertation, “A Study of Information Seeking Behavior: Investigating Exploratory Behavior in Physical & Online Spaces” in front of a demanding panel of fellow scholars.

Dongho’s dissertation investigates individuals’ behaviors during online and physical search tasks to identify their behavioral patterns. He gathered data from 31 participants whose behavior during web search and physical search tasks was collected via eye-tracker, web browser and wearable video recorder. His analysis suggests that individuals have preferred searching strategies that they adopt in different tasks and environments. He found that the behavioral pattern, however, was affected by the task type and the way information is structured in the environments.

Chirag Shah said, “Dongho has been an invaluable member of InfoSeeking Lab over the past four years. He worked on an NSF-funded project for social media, and a Google-funded project for sensor-based information seeking. Time flies, and I can’t believe it’s already time for Dongho to fly away! Congratulations to Dr. Choi for the successful defense of his dissertation. My best wishes to him and his family for the next chapter of their lives.”