Fostering serendipity in online information systems

Serendipity, the process of making fortunate discoveries for which someone was not looking for, plays a critical role in leveraging creativity and innovation. In this paper we propose a framework for facilitating serendipity in web information systems. We focus on three main technological areas which use the World Wide Web as a space for information seeking and knowledge creation: search, browse (navigation) and recommender systems. We argue that there are five factors that, individually and jointly, facilitate serendipity: novelty (or unexpectedness); diversity; personalization; visualization; and social collaboration. The paper reviews methods and techniques for each factor in each of the three technological areas and argues for a research agenda that addresses them in an effort to foster surprising discoveries and creative insights in the online world.