The Information Needs of Mobile Searchers: A Framework

The growing use of Internet-connected mobile devices demands that we reconsider search user interface design in light of the context and information needs specific to mobile users. In this paper the authors present a framework of mobile information needs, juxtaposing search motives—casual, lookup, learn, and investigate—with search types—informational, geographic, personal information management, and transactional

The effects of semantic and syntactic instruction on user performance and satisfaction in search user interface design

The design of interfaces to facilitate user search has become critical for search engines, ecommercesites, and intranets. This study investigated the use of targeted instructional hints to improve search by measuring the quantitative effects of users\u27 performance and satisfaction. The effects of syntactic, semantic and exemplar search hints on user behavior were evaluated in an empirical investigation using naturalistic scenarios. Combining the three search hint components, each with two levels of intensity, in a factorial design generated eight search engine interfaces. Eighty participants participated in the study and each completed six realistic search tasks. Results revealed that the inclusion of search hints improved user effectiveness, efficiency and confidence when using the search interfaces, but with complex interactions that require specific guidelines for search interface designers. These design guidelines will allow search designers to create more effective interfaces for a variety of searchapplications

Query-Based Summarization using Rhetorical Structure Theory

Research on Question Answering is focused mainly on classifying the question type and finding the answer. Presenting the answer in a way that suits the user’s needs has received little attention. This paper shows how existing question answering systems—which aim at finding precise answers to questions—can be improved by exploiting summarization techniques to extract more than just the answer from the document in which the answer resides. This is done using a graph search algorithm which searches for relevant sentences in the discourse structure, which is represented as a graph. The Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) is used to create a graph representation of a text document. The output is an extensive answer, which not only answers the question, but also gives the user an opportunity to assess the accuracy of the answer (is this what I am looking for?), and to find additional information that is related to the question, and which may satisfy an information need. This has been implemented in a working multimodal question answering system where it operates with two independently developed question answering modules

Designing Search: Effective Search Interfaces for Academic Library Websites

Academic libraries customize, support and provide access to myriad information systems, each with complex graphical user interfaces (GUIs). The number of possible information entry points on an academic library Web site is both daunting to the end user and consistently challenging to library Web site designers. Faced with the challenges inherent in designing online search interfaces and the ever-growing amount of resources available online, VCU Libraries sought to explore how to build effective search interfaces that, at the same time, support a wide variety of computer users and provide comprehensive access to assorted collections of electronic resources. Over a 9 month period, the Libraries designed, implemented and tracked the usage of 2 different search interfaces on their homepage. Each interface allowed the user to choose between 4 different search targets. In this case study, the authors discuss the complexities of designing search interfaces, outline findings from the 9 month study, evaluate the effectiveness of the 2 interface designs and about talk about future research in these areas

Enhancing Search User Interface of an Assets Management Solution

In today's time, information is of paramount importance and affects human life in conspicuous ways. Different companies, solutions and tools are developed to harness this information and retrieve is efficiently. One such tool is 'FA Platform', an Asset Management Solutions developed by FA Solutions Oy, which allows users to manage and search their assets and funds. This thesis contemplates over the issues faced by the search user interface of the 'FA Platform'. The thesis then proposes a new design implementation to improve the user experience of using the search functionality from the user's point of view. This study explores the concepts of search user interface in-depth to understand the industry standards and research previously done in these fields that could assist this study. Interviews were then conducted with users of the software to identify problems with the current interface. To further identify the possibilities, client's search-usage history was collected and analysed for patterns. The problems identified were that the existing solution lacked features to add new search criteria, option to select multiple values, and the general user interface was cluttered and difficult to comprehend. This thesis proposed a design prototype of the search user interface and tested ii with users against the existing implementation. Through testing, the new design prototype was found to be easy to use and provided a nice overall user-experience. The proposed design improved over the current implementation in three key areas: Redesigning the layout of search user interfaces to improve legibility; Adding an option to dynamically add more filter-fields as per requirement; and Providing an option to select multiple values for filter-fields. Having a good search user interface design is an important factor while developing a database management tool as it will increase user’s productivity, allowing them to find exactly what they want, how they want and when they want it. Even more so, a good design can also be very profitable for the company as it causes less distress to users

Exploratory information searching in the enterprise: a study of user satisfaction and task performance.

No prior research has been identified that investigates the causal factors for workplace exploratory search task performance. The impact of user, task, and environmental factors on user satisfaction and task performance was investigated through a mixed methods study with 26 experienced information professionals using enterprise search in an oil and gas enterprise. Some participants found 75% of high-value items, others found none, with an average of 27%. No association was found between self-reported search expertise and task performance, with a tendency for many participants to overestimate their search expertise. Successful searchers may have more accurate mental models of both search systems and the information space. Organizations may not have effective exploratory search task performance feedback loops, a lack of learning. This may be caused by management bias towards technology, not capability, a lack of systems thinking. Furthermore, organizations may not “know” they “don't know” their true level of search expertise, a lack of knowing. A metamodel is presented identifying the causal factors for workplace exploratory search task performance. Semistructured qualitative interviews with search staff from the defense, pharmaceutical, and aerospace sectors indicates the potential transferability of the finding that organizations may not know their search expertise levels

Dico: a conceptual model to support the design and evaluation of advanced search features for exploratory search

The design of models and tools to support Exploratory Search acquires more importance as the amount of information on the Web grows. The use of advanced search features is a viable approach for query exploration during Exploratory Search. However, the usage of advanced search features remains relatively low since Web search engines became popular, partially because of design decisions that ignore the complex and flexible nature of search activities. In this paper, we introduce Dico: a conceptual model for advanced search features for Exploratory Search, presenting and evaluating a set of guidelines created to support designers and evaluators to design better advanced search features, promoting its usage. Results from an evaluation activity with prospective designers indicated participants were able to make sense of Dico's guidelines, suggesting the guidelines as a promising artifact to support the evaluation of search engines92998710415th IFIP TC.13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT

Usability Patterns for Geoportals

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.Current geoportals and metadata catalogues, as user interfaces for discovery and exploration for geodata do still suffer from lacking usability, regardless whether experts or non-expert users are considered. Design patterns are well established in software development to tackle frequently occurring problems. Usability patterns are a specialization of such design patterns to specifically address user interface issues and related software solutions. However, existing usability patterns are not sufficient to cope with GI-usability issues as for instance related to discovery of geodata. This poster submission introduces an adapted GI-usability pattern concept

Creating Graph Abstractions for the Interpretation of Combined Functional and Anatomical Medical Images

The characteristics of the images produced by advanced scanning technologies has led to medical imaging playing a critical role in modern healthcare. The most advanced medical scanners combine different modalities to produce multi-dimensional (3D/4D) complex data that is time-consuming and challenging interpret. The assimilation of these data is further compounded when multiple such images have to be compared, e.g., when assessing a patient’s response to treatment or results from a clinical search engine. Abstract representations that present the important discriminating characteristics of the data have the potential to prioritise the critical information in images and provide a more intuitive overview of the data, thereby increasing productivity when interpreting multiple complex medical images. Such abstractions act as a preview of the overall information and allow humans to decide when detailed inspection is necessary. Graphs are a natural method for abstracting medical images as they can represent the relationships between any pathology and the anatomical structures they affect. In this paper, we present a scheme for creating abstract graph visualisations that facilitate an intuitive comparison of the anatomy-pathology relationships within complex medical images. The properties of our abstractions are derived from the characteristics of regions of interest (ROIs) within the images. We demonstrate how our scheme is used to preview, interpret, and compare the location of tumours within volumetric (3D) functional and anatomical images