Search result visualization with characters for children

Abstract

In this paper, we explore alternative ways to visualize search results for children. We propose a novel search result visualization using characters. The main idea is to represent each web document as a character where a character visually provides clues about the webpage's content. We focused on children between six and twelve as a target user group. Following the user-centered development approach, we conducted a preliminary user study to determine how children would represent a webpage as a sketch based on a given template of a character. Using the study results the first prototype of a search engine was developed. We evaluated the search interface on a touchpad and a touch table in a second user study and analyzed user's satisfaction and preferences.

Children asking questions

“…Our study complements previous investigations showing that interface personification preference may be more related to individual differences than age [56]. We did not see specific age effects found in other previous work (e.g., older children considering personification to be too childish) [20]. There was a substantial split regarding personalization and there were also a fair number of participants who preferred the non-personified condition (i.e., a family of four is not unlikely to have one person in this category).…”

“…Older participants are more likely than younger children to have a negative affective response to speech interfaces that violate privacy expectations (e.g., know information that the child didn't explicitly tell them) [34]. Outside of speech interfaces, at least a few investigations have suggested that personified search agents may help children interpret query results and found that this approach worked best with 8-and 9-year-olds (older children found it to be too "childish") [20]. Systems can be fairly accurate at distinguishing between adult and children's speech [43], however little is known about how a system could then adjust its personification and personalization in the most appropriate way to ages or preferences of users.…”