About

Michael Twidale is a professor in the Information Sciences department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, affiliated with the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science. His research areas include Interactive Computing, with recent courses taught covering Entrepreneurial IT Design, Museum Informatics, Sociotechnical Information Systems, the History and Foundations of Information Systems, and Usability Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. in Computing from Lancaster University, obtained in 1990. His professional focus involves exploring the intersection of computing technology and human interaction, contributing to the understanding and development of interactive systems and their social implications.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Sociology
• World Wide Web
• Human–computer interaction
• Psychology
• Computer Security
• Linguistics
• Public relations
• Visual arts
• Art
• Media studies
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Science
• Engineering
• Knowledge management
• Data science
• Communication
• Programming language
• Law
• Internet privacy
• History
• Cognitive science
• Library science

Selected publications

• How instructors and librarians at African universities cope with confusion resulting from ever-changing software applications

  Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship · 2025-01-02

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Toward Metaphor-Fluid Conversation Design for Voice User Interfaces

  ArXiv.org · 2025-02-17 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Metaphors play a critical role in shaping user experiences with Voice User Interfaces (VUIs), yet existing designs often rely on static, human-centric metaphors that fail to adapt to diverse contexts and user needs. This paper introduces Metaphor-Fluid Design, a novel approach that dynamically adjusts metaphorical representations based on conversational use-contexts. We compare this approach to a Default VUI, which characterizes the present implementation of commercial VUIs commonly designed around the persona of an assistant, offering a uniform interaction style across contexts. In Study 1 (N=130), metaphors were mapped to four key use-contexts-commands, information seeking, sociality, and error recovery-along the dimensions of formality and hierarchy, revealing distinct preferences for task-specific metaphorical designs. Study 2 (N=91) evaluates a Metaphor-Fluid VUI against a Default VUI, showing that the Metaphor-Fluid VUI enhances perceived intention to adopt, enjoyment, and likability by aligning better with user expectations for different contexts. However, individual differences in metaphor preferences highlight the need for personalization. These findings challenge the one-size-fits-all paradigm of VUI design and demonstrate the potential of Metaphor-Fluid Design to create more adaptive and engaging human-AI interactions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Not all who wander are lost: an argument for searching to browse as a separate information behaviour

  Information Research an international electronic journal · 2025-05-19

  articleOpen access

  Introduction. The relationship between search and browse has long been framed as separate, interleaved and sometimes equal activities. With the shift to nearly exclusive online behaviour, this relationship is changing Method. In light of some surprising incidental research findings, we conduct a critical literature synthesis of literature on search typologies, exploratory search and browsing, especially digital browsing. Analysis. Based on the results of previous work, we identify a gap in previous models of search, specifically searching to browse. Results. The notion of searching to browse changes the relationship between searching and browsing, particularly in a digital context. This new form of both searching and browsing creates a need for new interfaces, particularly for collecting items of interest. Conclusions. We argue for searching to browse as a new form of information behaviour, one that is slowly being accommodated by digital information systems. We recommend that more digital information systems take searching to browse into account.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Blending Code and Cause: Understanding the Dynamic Motivations of Volunteer Developers in community-driven FOSS projects

  2025-04-24 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• You are not Alone: Confusion with Software Applications in African University Libraries

  Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference · 2024-10-16

  articleOpen access

  Building on Nardi and O’Day’s (1999) classic book on information ecologies exploring the complexities of using multiple software applications in settings including libraries, we note that even though the technologies have changed over the decades, the importance of the work of librarians in assisting patrons has not changed much. Keeping up with popular, constantly evolving software packages like EndNote, Koha, NewGenlib, Baobab eLibrary, Openbiblio, Evergreen, Greenstone, and D-Space to support digital collections in various formats remains a constant challenge. constant challenge. Some librarians feel daunted by learning and explaining new software in a constantly changing technological ecosystem, while others embrace the challenge. As well as using software for their work, librarians have the responsibility to help their patrons learn, adapt, and apply new software to meet their information needs more effectively and efficiently. Like other client-facing professionals, librarians must also be mindful of the ‘myths’ (Ehrlich & Cash, 1994) that clients understand their problems and use online information if available. These software-related challenges have been documented in many countries (Asim et al., 2023, Adhikari, 2023), but our research identified a gap in the literature regarding the situation in Africa. The study implies the importance of education for librarians in adopting the right software and avoiding confusion. We conducted a review of LIS papers harvested from the LIS Ebscohost database about this topic in various countries of Africa between 2012 and 2022, identifying 75 papers as relevant according to our criteria. The poster presents the findings of the scoping review.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Something Just Like This: A Secret History of the Role of Analogues in Information Seeking

  2024-03-08 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Information seekers often want 'something just like this', an information object (song, book, movie) like one they already know about. This approach is the premise of many modern recommender systems, which ask information seekers for examples of things they like in order to return similar things. This type of information seeking, though, is not particularly well supported by search engines, partly because the ways in which objects can be alike are multifaceted and difficult to articulate, partly because the analogue might emerge in the process of information seeking. This approach to information seeking has been touched on repeatedly in information science literature but not examined in detail. In this paper, we present a pair of studies that explore both how people seek information using analogues online and the ways in which information objects might be alike. Our results offer a novel understanding of a previously underexplored but common behaviour, addressing how analogues are identified, how they are used in information seeking, and the ways in which objects can be analogous from an information seeker's perspective. Our work can support the development of recommender systems, conversational search approaches, and digital interfaces that support this common but little-examined type of information seeking.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Enriching Cultural Heritage Communities: New Tools and Technologies

  Interacting with Computers · 2024-04-19 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract This paper explores ways in which scholarly skill and expertise might be embodied in tools and sustainable practices that enable communities to create and manage their own digital archives. We focus particularly on tools and practices related to the recording and annotation of digitized materials. The paper is based on co-production practice in two very different kinds of community. Although the communities are different we find that tools designed for a specific community are valuable for others, thus offering the promise of general tools to support community-centred digitization and potentially also traditional archival practice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Collaborative Musicology: Designing a Digital Library of Musical Events Ephemera

  2023-10-27 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  We explore the challenges and potential for collaborative musicological research in creating a Digital Library centred on musical ephemera relating to historical performances. Runs of concert programmes and season brochures, constituting a metadata-rich collection of highly formulaic homogeneous documents, are combined with related but extremely heterogeneous groups of documents (such as a contemporary musical dictionary, music society journal, composer directory, congress schedules) as well as scores, audio, and other archival materials located on external websites. We give an overview of the prototype, explain how we fused general-purpose open-source software toolkits and libraries to develop an image-based Digital Library with editable annotations and backing store enhanced with linked data, and conclude by observing how well engaging with these code-bases worked out in practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Reframing ephemera: digitisation, community music-making, and archival value(s)

  Routledge eBooks · 2023 · 2 citations

  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science

  Live musical performances play a powerful role in defining human communities across the globe, yet such intangible temporal/spatial experiences tend to leave only faint traces on the historical record. The Internet of Musical Events: Digital Scholarship, Community, and the Archiving of Performance (InterMusE) project is working with local concert-giving institutions to digitise diverse source types relating to musical events and linking them together in the form of a dynamic digital archive, enabling them to “speak” to each other despite their apparently incompatible formats and geographical dispersal. Modelling new approaches to the open-access presentation of music-historical research based on digitally enabled collaboration, the project adopts an intensely collaborative and egalitarian approach to working alongside these musical communities to understand and preserve their heritage. This chapter explores community archives of musical ephemera as sites of co-produced, “post-custodial” collecting and preservation that can radically transform approaches to digitisation, community music-making, and archival value(s).

  PublisherDOI

• A Scoping Review of Mental Model Research in HCI from 2010 to 2021

  Lecture notes in computer science · 2023-01-01 · 11 citations

  reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David M. Nichols

  American Academy of Pediatrics

  56 shared

• Alan Dix

  Swansea University

  12 shared

• Catherine Blake

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  11 shared

• Andrea K. Thomer

  University of Arizona

  11 shared

• Dinesh Rathi

  11 shared

• Christopher Lueg

  University of Illinois System

  10 shared

• M. Cameron Jones

  Google (United States)

  10 shared

• Vandana Singh

  10 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Computer Science

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1995

• M.S., Computer Science

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1991

• B.S., Computer Science

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  1988

Awards & honors

• Celebration of Excellence 2026
• Celebration of Excellence 2025
• Celebration of Excellence 2024
• Celebration of Excellence 2023
• Celebration of Excellence 2022