Mediated Web information retrieval for a complex searching task

Abstract

The goal of this study is to understand whether providing a search intermediary familiar with a problem domain and its topical structure would support a user's Web searching tasks, especially complicated tasks with multifaceted topics, and whether the order of searching tasks or system usage influences their successful completion. This study investigates the effect of two factors, the interaction mode and the display layout, on the three main measures of the user's Web searching behaviors: effectiveness, efficiency, and usability. Two interaction modes are compared, mediation via a domain-specific document collection versus nonmediated search, and two display layouts, a combination of browsing-supporting hierarchic display and ranked list of results versus the simple linear list of search results.The results are analyzed in the Flow theory point of view; they were analyzed by order of the tasks and system usage order. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of how the mediation system and/or the combined display support a Web information user.

Evaluation of the navigation effectiveness of an organizational taxonomy built on a general classification scheme and domain thesauri

“…We created ideal answers by mapping concepts inherent in subtasks with bottom categories. We chose such an approach because concepts (terms) are seen as a basis for the selection of navigation paths (Lee & Olson, ; Large et al, ), as well as a mechanism for the enhancement of search queries (Sieg, Mobasher, Lytinen, & Burke, ; Lee & Muresan, ). Figure provides an example of ideal answers for a subtask.…”