research-article

An aspectual interface for supporting complex search tasks

Authors:

Iván Cantador,

Joemon M. JoseAuthors Info & Claims

SIGIR '09: Proceedings of the 32nd international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval

Pages 379 - 386

https://doi.org/10.1145/1571941.1572007

Published: 19 July 2009 Publication History

Abstract

With the increasing importance of search systems on the web, there is a continuing push to design interfaces which are a better match with the kinds of real-world tasks in which users are engaged. In this paper, we consider how broad, complex search tasks may be supported via the search interface. In particular, we consider search tasks which may be composed of multiple aspects, or multiple related subtasks. For example, in decision making tasks the user may investigate multiple possible solutions before settling on a single, final solution, while other tasks, such as report writing, may involve searching on multiple interrelated topics.

A search interface is presented which is designed to support such broad search tasks, allowing a user to create search aspects, each of which models an independent subtask of some larger task. The interface is built on the intuition that users should be able to structure their searching environment when engaged on complex search tasks, where the act of structuring and organization may aid the user in understanding his or her task. A user study was carried out which compared our aspectual interface to a standard web-search interface. The results suggest that an aspectual interface can aid users when engaged in broad search tasks where the search aspects must be identified during searching; for a task where search aspects were pre-defined, no advantage over the baseline was found. Results for a decision making task were less clear cut, but show some evidence for improved task performance.

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Cited By

Suh SChen MMin BLi TXia H(2024)Luminate: Structured Generation and Exploration of Design Space with Large Language Models for Human-AI Co-CreationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642400(1-26)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642400
Azizan ARahman NBakar ZKhairudin N(2021)You ask “Durian”, I gave “Musang King, Red Prawn and D24”: A Query Reformulation Behavior Experiment2021 2nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Data Sciences (AiDAS)10.1109/AiDAS53897.2021.9574131(1-4)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/AiDAS53897.2021.9574131
Hassan Awadallah AWhite RPantel PDumais SWang YLi JWang XGarofalakis MSoboroff ISuel TWang M(2014)Supporting Complex Search TasksProceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management10.1145/2661829.2661912(829-838)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2661829.2661912
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Index Terms

An aspectual interface for supporting complex search tasks
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. HCI design and evaluation methods
2. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
    1. Information retrieval query processing

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SIGIR '09: Proceedings of the 32nd international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval

July 2009

896 pages

ISBN:9781605584836

DOI:10.1145/1571941

General Chairs:
James Allan
University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
,
Javed Aslam
Northeastern University, USA
,
Program Chairs:
Mark Sanderson
University of Sheffield, UK
,
ChengXiang Zhai
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
,
Justin Zobel
University of Melbourne, Australia

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 19 July 2009

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SIGIR '09: The 32nd International ACM SIGIR conference on research and development in Information Retrieval

July 19 - 23, 2009

MA, Boston, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 792 of 3,983 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Suh SChen MMin BLi TXia H(2024)Luminate: Structured Generation and Exploration of Design Space with Large Language Models for Human-AI Co-CreationProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642400(1-26)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642400
Azizan ARahman NBakar ZKhairudin N(2021)You ask “Durian”, I gave “Musang King, Red Prawn and D24”: A Query Reformulation Behavior Experiment2021 2nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Data Sciences (AiDAS)10.1109/AiDAS53897.2021.9574131(1-4)Online publication date: 8-Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/AiDAS53897.2021.9574131
Hassan Awadallah AWhite RPantel PDumais SWang YLi JWang XGarofalakis MSoboroff ISuel TWang M(2014)Supporting Complex Search TasksProceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management10.1145/2661829.2661912(829-838)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2661829.2661912
He JBron Mde Vries AJones GSheridan PKelly Dde Rijke MSakai T(2013)Characterizing stages of a multi-session complex search task through direct and indirect query modificationsProceedings of the 36th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval10.1145/2484028.2484178(897-900)Online publication date: 28-Jul-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2484028.2484178
Bron Mvan Gorp JNack Fde Rijke MVishneuski Ade Leeuw SHersh WCallan JMaarek YSanderson M(2012)A subjunctive exploratory search interface to support media studies researchersProceedings of the 35th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval10.1145/2348283.2348342(425-434)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2348283.2348342
Steichen BAshman HWade V(2012)A comparative survey of Personalised Information Retrieval and Adaptive Hypermedia techniquesInformation Processing and Management: an International Journal10.1016/j.ipm.2011.12.00448:4(698-724)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ipm.2011.12.004
Joho HSakai T(2012)Grid-Based Interaction for Exploratory SearchInformation Retrieval Technology10.1007/978-3-642-35341-3_45(496-505)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-35341-3_45
Leelanupab TFeng YStathopoulos VJose J(2009)A Simulated User Study of Image Browsing Using High-Level ClassificationProceedings of the 4th International Conference on Semantic and Digital Media Technologies: Semantic Multimedia10.1007/978-3-642-10543-2_3(3-15)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-10543-2_3

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