Overcoming mobile device limitations through adaptive information retrieval

The present study evaluates user preferences for personalized information access through mobile devices. The research focuses on text search operations in three simulated devices on a PC screen (cellular telephone, Personal Digital Assistant [PDA], and Interactive TV [ITV] as control) through continuous search. The adaptation process implemented explicit user feedback regarding the relevance of the retrieved information. The results show that users preferred the adaptive information access system to the non-adaptive one for all the devices (PDA, cellular phone, and ITV). Moreover, adaptation neutralizes the consistent preference for ITV (big screen, easy manipulation) upon other devices for textual information manipulation tasks.