Biographical Info

I am currently a Research Fellow in the Augmented Social Cognition Area at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where I’ve been pursuing studies of human information interaction since 1991. Before joining PARC, I was a Professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley. I received my doctorate in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985.  I received a B.Sc. in psychology and anthropology from Trent University. I have been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Psychological Science, the National Academy of Education, and the ACM Computer-Human Interaction Academy. Oxford University Press recently published my  book titled “Information Foraging Theory: Adaptive Interaction with Information.” I’m currently an Associate Editor for Human Computer Interaction.

Peter Pirolli

Position: Research Fellow

Where: PARC

Publications: My CV

email: pirolli at parc dot com


RESEARCH INTERESTS

Augmented social cognition, information foraging theory, human-information interaction


VIDEO


Information Foraging Talk


MOST CITED PAPER in HCI


Recently announced as the most cited paper in Human Computer Interaction (the highest citation impact journal in HCI) 2006-2008:


  1. •Fu & Pirolli (2007). SNIF-ACT: A cognitive model of user navigation on the World Wide Web


RECENT TALKS & PAPERS


  1. •EC-TEL 2009 Keynote (in Keynote)

  2. •NSF Workshop Report on Information Seeking Suport Systems

  3. •Shrager et al. (in press). Soccer science and the Bayes community. TopiCS.

  4. •Pirolli (2009). An elementary social information foraging model. CHI ’09.

  5. •Pirolli, Wollny, & Suh (2009). So you know you’re getting the best possible information: A tool that increases Wikipedia credibility. CHI ‘09

  6. •Budiu, Piolli, & Hong (2009). Remembrance of things tagged: How tagging effort affects  tag production and human memory. CHI ’09.

  7. •Kammerer, Nairn, Pirolli, & Chi (2009). Signpost from the masses: Learning effects in an exploratory social tag search browser. CHI ’09

  8. •Nelson, Held, Pirolli, Hong, Schiano, & Chi (2009). With a little help from my friends: Examining the impact of social annotations in sensemaking tasks. CHI ’09. 

  9. •Ch 1 of  Information Foraging Theory (uncorrected proof)

  10. •Pirolli (2008). A probabilistic model of semantics in social information foraging.. (A model of topic dynamics in Lostpedia)

  11. •PARC library

  12. •ACM Digital Library

  13. •DBLP Bib Server


ABOUT MY WORK

  1. •Search Engine Land blogpost: Human Hardware: Foraging for Information

  2. •A. King’s review of my book

  3. •J. Nielsen: Deceivingly Strong Information Scent Costs Sales

  4. •J. Nielsen:  Information Foraging: Why Google Makes People Leave your Site Faster

  5. •J. Nielsen: Long vs short articles as content strategy

  6. •R. Chalmers’ New Scientist Article: Surf like a Bushman


SURFING

Home break: Sloat (OB)

Vacation break: The Rock

Shortboard: 6’8” Robin Prodanovich Reality Pro swallowtail

Longboard: 9’0” Stewart

Article: Chairmen of the boards

Other interests: Mountain biking, X-country skiing

 
MY PHOTO ALBUMS  Surfing Baja  Jesse’s Xmas Cabo surfing/hiking 2008  Baja road trip 2007  Baja road trip 2006../Personal/Surfing_in_Baja.html../Personal/Jesses_Xmas.html../Personal/Cabo_Hiking_%26_Surfing.html../Personal/Baja_Trip_2007_-_On_the_Road.html../Personal/Baja_Road_Trip_2006.html../Personal/Surfing_in_Baja.html

CURRENT FAVORITE QUOTE

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.


-- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

National Initiative for Social Participationhttp://iparticipate.wikispaces.com/