Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, has very subtle aspects to the website that target an emotional response to the user. These responses were studied by observing a user, in this case a 20 year old female named ‘Sam’ for confidentiality purposes, and an oral interview after interacting with the site. I found that Wikipedia.org does make a user’s emotional response fluctuate almost the entire human emotion spectrum.
I asked ‘Sam’ to use the Wikipedia site for no particular reason (i.e. no keyword to search with) and took notes on her physical responses to the site. ‘Sam’ went to the website, and was sitting up straight in her chair in the beginning. She then looked at news articles regarding the recent economic slump. From this article, she started to skim text and not actually read it. When a link caught her eye about another article in the article she was reading. She then leaned forward in her chair and squinted her face. When ‘Sam’ became informed through this new link about financial and political ties that could be seen as risqué, ‘Sam’ would mutter under her breath “What?” ‘Sam’ then clicked another relating link inside the article to view a photo and video clip without sound about the political official. ‘Sam’ became more relaxed and sat back in her chair and slouched as she watched the video regarding specific aspects about the political official. Her face was at ease until a fact was brought to her attention, through the video, that she did not agree with and gave a look of disgust and completely shifted around her face in an un-natural manor all most like a look of surprise that was unwanted. The photos were of unrelated content to the political official. It was photos of small designer-dogs (i.e. a schnoodle) and brought a large grin to her face and she leaned forward in her chair again to view the picture better. She then looked at another link on puppy mills and looked at those photos. Upon viewing one picture of a puppy mill, she jerked her head back and frowned. She then exited out of Wikipedia.
I then asked her a few questions on how she felt about certain things and why she reacted the way she did to them. I asked her why she used the site as a source of information and upon understanding the information provided why she responded only to herself (i.e. talking, body movement, facial changes). A synopsis of what she told me was she likes that the most current news stories are listed, in no particular order or bias. She also likes that the interactive parts of the site are what catch her eye (i.e. blue links) and that the site offers information to help her understand the information. If she is not informed enough about a particular aspect/foundation on a subject she is already presented with a path to gain that knowledge. The user (‘Sam’) aimless roamed to puppy mill through what interested her even though she started out with a broad goal (i.e. becoming informed about current events). The way in which the information was presented also had an impact on how she felt about the subject. When she saw a photo, of a puppy mill, she expressed more emotion, through body language, and then she did with text on a political official. ‘Sam’ wanted to use the site as a general foundation of knowledge of current events and other facts but she did not use the site to its full ability (i.e. edit, keyword search, discussion, etc.). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that relies on different medium to deliver a message (i.e. photos, videos, text) to allow users to understand and interpret information. However, if a user has no real goal on what they want to find out while on the site the link system is what really caught her eye and made her go onto a tangent. From this I inferred that the more pages a person looks at the more likely that the user will start to focus on other some-what related topics (i.e. politics to puppy mills).
Schnoodle
