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A search trail is an interactive visualization of how a previous searcher approached a related task. Using search trails to assist users requires understanding aspects of the task, user, and trails. In this paper, we examine two questions. First, what are task characteristics that influence a user's ability to gain benefits from others' trails? Second, what is the impact of a "mismatch" between a current user's task and previous user's task which originated the trail? We report on a study that investigated the influence of two factors on participants' perceptions and behaviors while using search trails to complete tasks. Our first factor, task scope, focused on the scope of the task assigned to the participant (broad to narrow). Our manipulation of this factor involved varying the number of constraints associated with tasks. Our second factor, trail scope, focused on the scope of the task that originated the search trails given to participants. We investigated how task scope and trail scope affected participants' (RQ1) pre-task perceptions, (RQ2) post-task perceptions, and (RQ3) search behaviors. We discuss implications of our results for systems that use search trails to provide assistance. 

In recent years, the “search as learning” community has argued that search systems should be designed to support learning. We report on a lab study in which we manipulated the learning objectives associated with search tasks assigned to participants. We manipulated learning objectives by leveraging Anderson and Krathwohl’s taxonomy of learning (A&K’s taxonomy) [2], which situates learning objectives at the intersection of two orthogonal dimensions: the cognitive process and the knowledge type dimension. Participants in our study completed tasks with learning objectives that varied across three cognitive processes (apply, evaluate, and create) and three knowledge types (factual, conceptual, and procedural knowledge). We focus on the effects of the task’s cognitive process and knowledge type on participants’ pre-/post-task perceptions and search behaviors. Our results found that the three knowledge types considered in our study had a greater effect than the three cognitive processes. Specifically, conceptual knowledge tasks were perceived to be more difficult and required more search activity. We discuss implications for designing search systems that support learning.