Improving web search transparency by using a Venn diagram interface

Abstract

The user interfaces of the most popular search engines are largely the same. Typically, users are presented with an ordered list of documents, which provide limited help if users are having trouble finding the information they need. This article presents an interface called the Venn Diagram Interface (VDI) that offers users improved search transparency. The VDI allows users to see how each term, or group of terms, in a query contributes to the entire result set of a search. Furthermore, it allows users to browse the result sets generated by each of these terms. In a test with 10 participants, the VDI was compared against a standard web search interface, Google. With the VDI, users were able to find more documents of higher relevance and were more inclined to continue searching. Their level of interactivity was higher, the quality of the answers they found was perceived to be better. Eight out of 10 users preferred the VDI.

A study of the use of simulated work task situations in interactive information retrieval evaluations

“…The 198 identified papers were divided into two categories of publications either reporting on evaluation studies using simulated work task situations, or not. In total 67 papers report on empirical evaluation by use of simulated work task situations and constitute the sample of our study (Airio, 2008;Arapakis et al, 2008;Bell and Ruthven, 2004;Bierig and Goker, 2006;Blomgren et al, 2004;Brajnik et al, 2002;Craven, 2003;Fachry et al, 2008;Freund and Toms, 2006;Haggerty et al, 2003;Hammer-Aebi et al, 2006;Harper and Kelly, 2006;Harper et al, 2003;Jose, 2006a, b, 2008;Jose et al, 1998;Kim, 2007;Kules and Shneiderman, 2008;Langer and Frøkjaer, 2008;Larsen and Ingwersen, 2001;Larsen, 2002;Nielsen, 2004;Pansanato and Fortes, 2007;Papaeconomou et al, 2008;Petrelli and Auld, 2008;Petrelli, 2008;Petrelli et al, 2002Petrelli et al, , 2004Petrelli et al, , 2006Pharo and Nordlie, 2005;Pharo, 2008;Price et al, 2007;Qu and Furnas, 2008;Rodden et al, 2001;Ruthven et al, 2002Ruthven et al, , 2003Sihvonen and Vakkari, 2004;Skov and Ingwersen, 2008;Suomela and Kekäläinen, 2005a, b;…”

“…Examples of evaluation studies of systems facilities and functionalities include thesaurus assisted searching (Sihvonen and Vakkari, 2004), adaptive TV News (Haggerty et al, 2003), retrieval of domain-specific documents (Price et al, 2007), and different types of interfaces developed to support and facilitate IIR (e.g. Brajnik et al, 2002;Harper et al, 2003, Joho and Jose 2006a, b, 2008Langer and Frøkjaer, 2008). The third category concerns studies of search behaviour, for example, the role of emotion in IIR (Arapakis et al, 2008), access to electronic resources by visually impaired people (Craven, 2003), or access to archival material (Fachry et al, 2008), enterprise search behaviour of software engineers (Freund and Toms, 2006), and users' web search tactics (Kules and Shneiderman, 2008).…”

“…The impact of the internet is clearly visible as quite many studies focus on web retrieval, web information access, or use the internet as "search system" (e.g. Airio, 2008;Bell and Ruthven, 2004;Craven, 2003;Haggerty et al, 2003;Kim, 2007;Kules and Shneiderman, 2008;Langer and Frøkjaer, 2008;Pansanato and Fortes, 2007;Papaeconomou et al, 2008;Pharo and Nordlie, 2005;Pharo, 2008;Rodden et al, 2001;Skov and Ingwersen, 2008;Tombros et al, 2003Tombros et al, , 2005Villa et al, 2008;White et al, 2001aWhite et al, , b, 2003White et al, , 2008 In brief, simulated work task situations are used in a variety of IIR studies that all aim to ensure realism in the process of searching for information, to capture the users' interactions with information and system(s), as well as the users' perception and satisfaction with the retrieved information.…”

“…Bell and Ruthven, 2004;Freund and Toms, 2006;Joho and Jose, 2006b;Sihvonen and Vakkari, 2004;White et al, 2005b; or types of information needs (e.g. Craven, 2003;Freund and Toms, 2006;Joho and Jose, 2006a;Kim, 2007;Langer and Frøkjaer, 2008;Pansanato and Fortes, 2007;Tombros et al, 2003Tombros et al, , 2005Toms et al, 2007;White et al, 2001aWhite et al, , b, 2003White et al, , 2005aWhite et al, , b, 2007White et al, , 2008White and Marchionini, 2007). This clearly illustrates the need to conduct IIR studies with different representations of information needs, and emphasises the incompleteness of simulated work task situations by so far only being validated for exploratory searching (e.g.…”

“…In 25 per cent (17) of the studies, examples of used simulated work task situations were displayed (e.g. Fachry et al, 2008;Haggerty et al, 2003;Langer and Frøkjaer, 2008;Larsen and Ingwersen, 2001;Nielsen, 2004;Skov and Ingwersen, 2008;Szlavik et al, 2007;Toms et al, 2007). This is compared to 43 per cent ( 29) of the studies that in some cases did provide information about what was searched for, but did not depict the actual simulated work task situations used (e.g.…”