2,698 research outputs found
ImageSieve: Exploratory search of museum archives with named entity-based faceted browsing
Over the last few years, faceted search emerged as an attractive alternative to the traditional "text box" search and has become one of the standard ways of interaction on many e-commerce sites. However, these applications of faceted search are limited to domains where the objects of interests have already been classified along several independent dimensions, such as price, year, or brand. While automatic approaches to generate faceted search interfaces were proposed, it is not yet clear to what extent the automatically-produced interfaces will be useful to real users, and whether their quality can match or surpass their manually-produced predecessors. The goal of this paper is to introduce an exploratory search interface called ImageSieve, which shares many features with traditional faceted browsing, but can function without the use of traditional faceted metadata. ImageSieve uses automatically extracted and classified named entities, which play important roles in many domains (such as news collections, image archives, etc.). We describe one specific application of ImageSieve for image search. Here, named entities extracted from the descriptions of the retrieved images are used to organize a faceted browsing interface, which then helps users to make sense of and further explore the retrieved images. The results of a user study of ImageSieve demonstrate that a faceted search system based on named entities can help users explore large collections and find relevant information more effectively
Towards improving web service repositories through semantic web techniques
The success of the Web services technology has brought topicsas software reuse and discovery once again on the agenda of software engineers. While there are several efforts towards automating Web service discovery and composition, many developers still search for services
via online Web service repositories and then combine them manually. However, from our analysis of these repositories, it yields that, unlike traditional software libraries, they rely on little metadata to support
service discovery. We believe that the major cause is the difficulty of automatically deriving metadata that would describe rapidly changing Web service collections. In this paper, we discuss the major shortcomings of state of the art Web service repositories and, as a solution, we
report on ongoing work and ideas on how to use techniques developed in the context of the Semantic Web (ontology learning, mapping, metadata based presentation) to improve the current situation
Evaluating advanced search interfaces using established information-seeking model
When users have poorly defined or complex goals search interfaces offering only keyword searching facilities provide inadequate support to help them reach their information-seeking objectives. The emergence of interfaces with more advanced capabilities such as faceted browsing and result clustering can go some way to some way toward addressing such problems. The evaluation of these interfaces, however, is challenging since they generally offer diverse and versatile search environments that introduce overwhelming amounts of independent variables to user studies; choosing the interface object as the only independent variable in a study would reveal very little about why one design out-performs another. Nonetheless if we could effectively compare these interfaces we would have a way to determine which was best for a given scenario and begin to learn why. In this article we present a formative framework for the evaluation of advanced search interfaces through the quantification of the strengths and weaknesses of the interfaces in supporting user tactics and varying user conditions. This framework combines established models of users, user needs, and user behaviours to achieve this. The framework is applied to evaluate three search interfaces and demonstrates the potential value of this approach to interactive IR evaluation
Slicing and dicing the information space using local contexts
In recent years there has been growing interest in faceted grouping of documents for Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR). It is suggested that faceted grouping can offer a flexible way of browsing a collection compared to clustering. However, the success of faceted grouping seems to rely on sufficient knowledge of collection structure. In this paper we propose an approach based on the local contexts of query terms, which is inspired by the interaction of faceted search and browsing. The use of local contexts is appealing since it requires less knowledge of the collection than existing approaches. A task-based user study was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of our interface in varied complexity. The results suggest that the local contexts can be exploited as the source of search result browsing in IIR, and that our interface appears to facilitate different aspects of search process over the task complexity. The implication of the evaluation methodology using high complexity tasks is also discussed
Improving Exploratory Search Interfaces: Adding Value or Information Overload?
One method for supporting more exploratory forms of search has been to include a compound of new interface features, such as facets, previews, collection points, synchronous communication, and note-taking spaces, within a single search interface. One side effect, however, is that some compounds can be confusing, rather than supportive during search. Faceted browsing, for example, conveys domain terminology and supports rich interaction, but can potentially present an abundance of information. In this paper we focus on the faceted example and conclude with our position that Cognitive Load Theory can be used to estimate and thus manage the potential complexities of adding new features to search interfaces
From Keyword Search to Exploration: How Result Visualization Aids Discovery on the Web
A key to the Web's success is the power of search. The elegant way in which search results are returned is usually remarkably effective. However, for exploratory search in which users need to learn, discover, and understand novel or complex topics, there is substantial room for improvement. Human computer interaction researchers and web browser designers have developed novel strategies to improve Web search by enabling users to conveniently visualize, manipulate, and organize their Web search results. This monograph offers fresh ways to think about search-related cognitive processes and describes innovative design approaches to browsers and related tools. For instance, while key word search presents users with results for specific information (e.g., what is the capitol of Peru), other methods may let users see and explore the contexts of their requests for information (related or previous work, conflicting information), or the properties that associate groups of information assets (group legal decisions by lead attorney). We also consider the both traditional and novel ways in which these strategies have been evaluated. From our review of cognitive processes, browser design, and evaluations, we reflect on the future opportunities and new paradigms for exploring and interacting with Web search results
CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap
After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in
multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year.
In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio-
economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown
of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on
requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the
community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our
Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as
National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core
technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research
challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal
challenges
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