The Impact of Marginal Utility and Time on Distributed Information Retrieval

Abstract

This paper argues that marginal utility can be extended from the domain of Micro-economics to explain some of the problems that frustrate interaction with distributed systems. In particular, it is argued that concave utility curves can be used to analyse the electronic gridlock that occurs when remote systems cannot satisfy the number of demands which users make upon their services. Convex utility curves represent the information saturation that occurs when users cannot extract important documents from amass of irrelevant information. The paper goes on to argue that marginal utility can also be used to identify a range of interface techniques that reduce the problems associated with electronic gridlock and information saturation.