Map- or list-based recommender agents? Does the map metaphor fulfill its promise?

Abstract

We present a spatialization of digital library content based on item similarity and an experiment which compares the performance of this spatialization relative to a simple list-based display. Items in the library are elementary school, middle school, and high school science and engineering learning resources. Spatialization and visualization are accomplished through two-dimensional interactive Sammon mapping of pairwise item similarities computed from the joint occurrence of word bigrams. The 65 science teachers participating in the experiment were asked to search the library for curricular items they would consider using as part of one or more teaching assignments. The results indicate that whereas the spatializations adequately capture the salient features of the library’s content and teachers actively use them, item retrieval rates, task-completion time, and perceived utility do not significantly differ from the semantically poorer but easier to comprehend and navigate list-based representations. These results put into question the usefulness of the rapidly increasing supply of information spatializations.

Perspectives

“…The results of tests with students (which in my experience may not mirror organizational attitudes) indicate that the visual approaches adopted in the Enhanced user interface are significantly more helpful than the Standard user interface. These results are not in any way comparable to those reported by Reitsma et al (2017). I have brought these two articles together because they are both concerned with the development of user interfaces that improve the process of findability.…”

“…I am taking two recent articles together under this heading. The first by Reitsma et al (2017) considers the value of using map displays rather than list displays in the presentation of search results from a digital library application. Based on a well-conducted study, they did not uncover any advantage of the maps over the lists.…”