Keywords

1 Introduction

This paper describes a study that focuses on digital humanities; in particular, how senior adults tag cultural heritage information. The author reported the results of an empirical study that identified tagging behavior of elderly users. The results of the study can be used to identify tagging semantics for senior adults and clarify related interface design issues with regards to cultural heritage information presented in organizations such as archive, museum, and cultural centers.

As Collier stated, “Comparison is a fundamental tool of analysis. It sharpens our power of description, and plays a central role in concept-formation by brining into focus suggestive similarities and contrasts among cases” (p. 105) [1]. By making comparisons, one can further understand similarities and differences of the targeted phenomena. Most of the studies related to social tagging are not focused specifically on senior users; as a result, the interface design mostly targets towards users in general. This study sets out to understand the elderly’s tagging behavior of multimedia cultural heritage information, with the purpose of possible comparisons with the general users. The research question is centered on the main question: What is senior adults’ tagging behavior in cultural heritage information?

2 Related Literature

In this section, the author presents related literature from three areas, including the studies of mental models, social tagging, and cultural heritage information. Mental models describe how a person processes information and the associated behavior. In particular, mental models explain how and why a group of people do certain things. It is important to understand users from the perspective of mental models so that phenomena can be more easily understood. Social tagging has been studied from different perspectives and by scholars from various disciplines. With different perspectives come with the unique purposes and foci. For this study, the researcher is interested in the elderly and their ways of giving tags. In this section, the researcher looks into the fields of mental models, the history of tagging, recent development of social tagging in relation to the studies of the elderly. Lastly, concerning cultural heritage information the researcher focuses the discussion on the definition, the types of cultural heritage information, and the type that is specifically used in this study.

Even with the advancement of touch-based interface and technology, the art and science of searching and browsing still needs much effort from users’ perspectives. With user studies, interface designers can better orient related design to better meet the user’s needs. In this study, the research team sets out to identify the elderly’s tagging behavior. When a specified and targeted audience is identified and their needs clarified, we believe that the overall searching experience would be enhanced.

2.1 Mental Models

It is generally believed that a mental model describes someone’s thinking process about how something works in the real world. Since childhood, as we begin to understand the world, we construct numerous internal models in our minds. Child psychologist Jean Piaget and others believe that “a child constructs a mental model of the world.” In essence, Piaget argued that intelligence was a not fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment” McLeod [2]. It is therefore reasonable to say that mental models shift states and shapes from a developmental stage to the next in a human’s life.

Gentner and Stevens [3] edited a collection of chapters in a book titled Mental Models. They believed mental models are “people’s views of the world, of themselves, of their own capabilities, and of the tasks that they are asked to perform, or topics they are asked to learn, depend heavily on the conceptualizations that they bring to the task.” As a Design Researcher, Young [4] believes that a mental model is a thinking style about how an audience describes his/her behavioral aspect of achieving a certain goal. She uses mental model diagrams to understand her clients’ thinking styles, so as to design the interface that suits the clients’ real needs and their working styles. As Magzan [5] stated that “mental models are very often hidden, and we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior. Once created, they become fixed and reinforced in the mind, becoming difficult to change.” This hidden and unconscious “framework” often guides us in carrying out things we set out to do in everyday life. DeBono [6] noted clearly that the function of mental models is to “mediate reality for our minds and help us categorize and organize an endless stream of information we take every day.” In one way or another, it is positive that mental models are found in almost everything we do on the daily basis and are essential in understanding a particular group.

As described above, mental models change as we progress through life stages. In this paper, the research team is interested in understanding how senior adults tag differently from adults in other age groups. What is the mental model of the elderly and their thinking process as well as their decision making process in terms of tagging? With this in mind, the researcher aims to do two things. First, the researcher reports on the research results designed to examine the elderly’s tagging behavior. Secondly, the elderly’s tagging mental model is discussed to reveal its uniqueness.

2.2 Tagging and Social Tagging

Originated from the field of library and information science, tagging is a process of describing and categorizing objects, whether in forms of books, articles, archives, texts, images, or other types of multimedia resources. With the advances of technology, everyone who has access to the Internet can add tags to resources based on his/her own understandings of that resource. Social tagging describes how users provide tags collectively to a particular object, be it a piece of art, photo, an article, a blog post, etc. The user providing tags may include specialists and non-specialists. Folksonomy is the term that describes the results and the collection of social tagging. Unlike subject experts who assign subject terms for books in libraries and artifacts in museums and art centers, the nature of “folk taxonomy” (folksonomy) tends to be very user centered. Tsai et al. [7] stated that “user tags are much more subjective, reflecting the end-user’s personal understanding of the content.” Studies have shown that tagging provides two benefits. One is for the management purpose, and the other for the retrieval purpose. The tagging provided by the general public shows the essence of the object being described, which can reveal insights for the interface designer; on the other hand, from the user’s perspective, accessing the collection using tags provided by the user enhances the retrieval effectiveness.

Nearly 10 years ago, Trant [8] reviewed 180 published research articles and noted that social tagging was a new area of research. In the review article, Trant stated that because the research area was new, theoretical perspectives and relevant research methods were just about to be defined. Ten years later now, the research has accumulated and flourished to a certain level, yet clarifying issues and applications of social tagging is still challenging. Essentially, social tagging relies on users rather than professional librarians to describe resources for management and retrieval purpose. People who share the same cultural context and belong to the same generation might act and think similarly, thus have similar ways of perceiving and processing the same piece of information represented at hand. In this research, the author intended to identify the mental model of the elderly’s social tagging behavior.

2.3 Cultural Heritage Information

Cultural heritage information is discussed extensively among the GLAM community, which includes professionals in settings such as galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM). Cultural heritage information is defined in two categories, i.e., tangible (paintings, antiquities, artifacts, buildings, monuments, etc.) and intangible (dance, plays, music, stories, etc.) (Ruthven and Chowdhury) [9]. According to Culture in Development (CiD) [10], an organization with the mission to protect cultural heritage from any disaster, cultural heritage can be distinguished in the following ways:

  • Built environment (buildings, townscapes, archaeological remains)

  • Natural environment (rural landscapes, coasts and shorelines, agricultural heritage)

  • Artifacts (books & documents, objects, pictures).

The concerns of this community, in terms of issues of human computer interaction (HCI), may focus more on the aspects relating to managing, accessing, and retrieving both tangible and intangible artifacts. From the digital humanities’ point of view, the GLAM community cares about preserving and promoting the precious cultural and artistic objects and information to the public with sophisticated digital methods. In particular, with the assistance of technology, tagging provided by the general public can shed lights on the categorization and organization aspects of digital archives that GLAM professionals concern about.

In this research, Tamsui Wiki is the cultural heritage information that was studied and where the research data was collected. Built in 2013, Tamsui Wiki is a completely virtual cultural heritage collection and a collaborative effort made by the College of Liberal Arts in Tamkang University (TKU). The College of Liberal Arts is consisted of departments in both humanities and social sciences, including the Department of Chinese, the Department of History, the Department of Journalism, the Department of Information and Library Science, and the Department of Information and Communication. The collaborative research project received funding for digitally preserving the local cultural heritage. TKU is located in Tamsui, an early developed area where the western business first came in contact with Taiwan. In the 17th century, the Spanish arrived in the area of Tamsui; by the mid-19th century Tamsui had become the largest port in Taiwan. With the rich heritage influenced by diversified cultures, Tamsui has become a fascinating district of northern Taiwan that attracts many artists and visitors from local and abroad. Even in the present time, Tamsui plays a significant role in Taiwanese culture (“Tamsui District” n.d.) [11].

A vast amount of information and multimedia objects are collected from Tamsui Wiki, a digital humanities project built collaboratively by the five departments of TKU as mentioned above. Each department offers its scholarly expertise in different elements of the project. Essentially, the Department of History provided the rich oral history interviewed from the well-known local people; the Department of the Journalism provided valuable images and multimedia resources by filming stories of very important people who are Tamsui residents. Historic buildings, traditional shops, as well as cultural events focusing on Tamsui area are also included. After Tamsui Wiki accumulates its rich resources, the Department of Library and Information Science joined and centered its focus on the issue of organization, access, and retrieval of the diversified multimedia resources.

3 Research Method

This study sets out to examine the elderly’s social tagging behavior. The research team used the revised Delphi method followed by a drawing session with 20 elderly citizens who are over 55 years old and are residents in northern Taipei.

Through a set of selection criteria, including the length of the film and the theme of the film (non-political and non-religious topics), a multimedia resource was selected by the research team from the digital humanities Wikipedia, Tamsui Wiki, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. Each participant was interviewed for about 30 min after watching a 10-min film about a traditional bakery famous for its role as wedding engagement favors in Taiwan. The questions of the guided interviews mainly focus on the tags that the participant gave based on their understanding and knowledge of the film. Revised Delphi method was conducted for two rounds; with 10 elderly citizens each round, resulting in total number 20 seniors. The reason for carrying out multiple rounds of Delphi method is to seek consensus among the elderly on tagging principles. After the interview session, each participant was asked to draw a fishbone diagram with the purpose of grouping in more detailed fashion the main tags and sub-tags with visual aid after giving the list of the tags during the interview session. With the knowledge of fishbone diagram being usually used for problem solving in various context, the researcher found such visual information particularly helpful l in assisting and clarifying the list of tags with the elderly. The process helped the elderly reexamine the classification of tags they perceived from watching the film.

Fig. 1.
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(Source: http://tamsui.dils.tku.edu.tw/wiki/index.php/首頁)

The homepage of Tamsui Wiki, a cooperative effort of cultural heritage information

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Fig. 2.
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(Source: http://tamsui.dils.tku.edu.tw/wiki/index.php/大淡水地區全紀錄人物誌/淡水禮餅獻)

The testing video selected from Tamsui Wiki for the research purpose, a film about the legacy of a local bakery

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4 Findings and Discussions

The findings of the study reveal three aspects: the types of tags the elderly consider, the prompts the elderly consider, and the factors the elderly consider. First, the analysis of the interview and fishbone diagram showed that the types of tags the elderly consider fall into three categories: concrete objects, emotion aspects, personal memory and related experience. The three categories were repeatedly shown in the elderly’s tags. The very obvious examples in the category of concrete objects are names of the building, which fall in to the category of the definition of cultural heritage information, the built environment. Other examples are names of the street, the name of the shop, the name of the transportation stops, and also the name of the various goods filmed in the video. The second category, emotional aspects, means the overall perception that the elderly revealed through their tags. The sources of tags, such as “retro,” “legacy,” “preservation,” etc. came from the scripts and the conversation in the film. The third category, personal memory and related experience, essentially means the hidden idea that the elderly caught after watching the film. For instance, the film’s main idea was to preserve the emotional element of the traditional wedding cookies that usually a Taiwanese family would prepare for their bride-to-be as a wedding favor for the guests coming to the pre-marital engagement ceremony. Many Taiwanese people have experienced this sort of wedding customs more or less in their lives. This common knowledge and shared experience apparently influence the elderly’s tagging.

Secondly, the prompts the elderly consider when giving tags are based on explicit texts, buildings, and people shown in the film. When the interviewee asked what prompted the elderly to give certain tags, the elderly shared the obvious texts shown in the film caught their attention. These texts, even appeared only a few and probably served as section titles in the film, became important prompts in the minds of the elderly when asked to provide tags regarding the film they have just watched. Again, repeated instances of seeing the same buildings and key people in the film seemed to bring emphasis as the elderly recalled what the film was about, and therefore became important prompts.

Lastly, the factors the elderly consider when giving tags are mainly because of repeated themes, concrete objects, as well as personal and communal memory from the past experience. When being asked of the possible reasons for tags and groupings of the tags in fishbone diagrams, the analysis showed the elderly easily picked up repeatedly conversed notions and words; they also perceived the importance of the concrete objects in the film. Also, it is important to note the communal memory is worthy of attention. After sharing the most important factors that helped coming up with tags about the film, the elderly’s choices of tags then shifted to a rather subtle layer that was beneath the obvious ones. This layer is concerned with the shared memory of the same generation that no other generations perceived, or perhaps not as strongly perceived. Figures 3 and 4 are excerpts of tags obtained from the revised Delphi methods with weighted relevance marked by the participant.

Fig. 3.
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Tags extracted from revised Delphi method, with numbered priorities

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Fig. 4.
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Tags extracted from revised Delphi method, with numbered priorities from a different senior participant

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Mental models change states and shapes during a person’s maturity process; therefore, it is essential for researchers to understand how a group of users change in their state of mind as they interact with an interface. Collectively, studying the mental model of a certain group assists interface designers to more closely realize desired results. According to Wang et al. [12], “Current research on multimedia emotion tagging mainly consists of two steps: feature extraction and classification.” The results of this study echoed the statement. The Delphi method combined with a drawing session revealed that upon watching a 10-min film concerning cultural heritage information, the elderly provided tags that first extracted from the facts and artifacts from the environment shown in the film, including buildings, people, and texts. After the first round of tagging, with the tool of fishbone diagrams, the elderly showed their thoughts on grouping of the tags. Emotion tagging comes after the factual tagging is completed, which brings implications for current tagging system. The interface designers are advised to extract the emotional aspects of the resources being described, especially for the elderly users, in order to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of information retrieval.

5 Conclusion

Studying and analyzing senior adults’ tagging behavior and their mental model provides insights for cultural heritage information for organizations such as museums and cultural centers to adjust interface design (in particular the searching and browsing aspects) to suit different generation of users. Searching the literature from the field of library and information science, human computer interaction, computer science, psychology, and social studies, past studies showed that mental models of different generations possibly reveal unique tagging principles and guidelines for the elderly.

The results of the study bring insights into the analysis of tagging semantics centered on senior users. The contribution of such results can help researchers, designers, stakeholders, and educators alike to understand the conceptual differences of tagging behavior, with the analysis of the mental models of users with age difference. The results of the study also help in designing the tag-based interface for senior users to ease the cognitive load when searching and choosing needed cultural heritage information in archive and museum settings. For future research focuses on the senior users, the author suggests innovative video tagging and retrieving options that include tagging principles that are revealed in this study. The concrete objects, the explicit texts, and key people repeatedly shown and mentioned in the video are the comparatively easy sources for tagging recommendations. For the aspect of past experience, shared memory, and the knowledge of the same generation that is found critical in the study, is primarily in the area of emotion tagging, the researcher believes more research studies are needed and expected in the long run, so we can better understand how emotion can be extracted and applied in retrieving multimedia resources in the most efficient and flexible way for the targeted user.