Designing for Exploratory Search on Touch Devices

Abstract

Exploratory search confront users with challenges in expressing search intents as the current search interfaces require investigating result listings to identify search directions, iterative typing, and reformulating queries. We present the design of Exploration Wall, a touch-based search user interface that allows incremental exploration and sense-making of large information spaces by combining entity search, flexible use of result entities as query parameters, and spatial configuration of search streams that are visualized for interaction. Entities can be flexibly reused to modify and create new search streams, and manipulated to inspect their relationships with other entities. Data comprising of task-based experiments comparing Exploration Wall with conventional search user interface indicate that Exploration Wall achieves significantly improved recall for exploratory search tasks while preserving precision. Subjective feedback supports our design choices and indicates improved user satisfaction and engagement. Our findings can help to design user interfaces that can effectively support exploratory search on touch devices.

Designing Health Websites Based on Users’ Web-Based Information-Seeking Behaviors: A Mixed-Method Observational Study

“…Clicking on links (and tiles) indicates the effort of in-depth understanding about a topic and represents the depth of search. Query reformulation is an essential concept in exploratory search for measuring the degree of information exploration [43,44]. In the context of this study, query reformulation refers to issuing a new search query in the baseline website or adjusting the sliders in BHX.…”

Visual Exploration System in an Industrial Context

“…Exploratory Search Systems [2] aim to involve and engage users actively into the search process by providing human control over the seeking process. They aim to provide features to (re)formulate queries, giving information on the search space and clues for further possible search directions [4], allowing the constant exploration and filtering of retrieved results [3]. The presentation of query results is imperative to engage the user in the search process [5].…”

“…AcquaBrowser Library [13] does not show the cluster names in a listed way, but introduces a fluid, attractive and interactive word cloud visualisation, clicking on a word the user can refine his/her search. With the introduction of touch mobile devices, classical list-based result presentation poses challenges for the interaction with Exploratory Search Systems to refine searches [4].…”

InspirationWall

“…Such systems predict the current intent model of the user in the exploration and suggest possible explorations. These approaches have also been found useful in avoiding keyword input by selecting and manipulating suggested keywords by touch [8]. The present work investigate further alternative input modalities such as speech to text that permit the system to run in the background without interrupting the creative process but providing a continuous resource.…”