research-article

Supporting Exploratory Search with a Visual User-Driven Approach

Authors:

Cecilia Di Sciascio,

Eduardo VeasAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS), Volume 7, Issue 4

Article No.: 18, Pages 1 - 35

https://doi.org/10.1145/3009976

Published: 13 December 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Whenever users engage in gathering and organizing new information, searching and browsing activities emerge at the core of the exploration process. As the process unfolds and new knowledge is acquired, interest drifts occur inevitably and need to be accounted for. Despite the advances in retrieval and recommender algorithms, real-world interfaces have remained largely unchanged: results are delivered in a relevance-ranked list. However, it quickly becomes cumbersome to reorganize resources along new interests, as any new search brings new results. We introduce an interactive user-driven tool that aims at supporting users in understanding, refining, and reorganizing documents on the fly as information needs evolve. Decisions regarding visual and interactive design aspects are tightly grounded on a conceptual model for exploratory search. In other words, the different views in the user interface address stages of awareness, exploration, and explanation unfolding along the discovery process, supported by a set of text-mining methods. A formal evaluation showed that gathering items relevant to a particular topic of interest with our tool incurs in a lower cognitive load compared to a traditional ranked list. A second study reports on usage patterns and usability of the various interaction techniques within a free, unsupervised setting.

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Cited By

Chatti MGuesmi MMuslim A(2024)Visualization for Recommendation Explainability: A Survey and New PerspectivesACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems10.1145/367227614:3(1-40)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672276
Soufan A(2023)Towards Understanding and Supporting Exploratory SearchesProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3576840.3578304(490-494)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3576840.3578304
He CMicallef LSerim BVuong TRuotsalo TJacucci G(2023)Interactive visual facets to support fluid exploratory searchJournal of Visualization10.1007/s12650-022-00865-426:1(211-230)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s12650-022-00865-4
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Supporting Exploratory Search with a Visual User-Driven Approach
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI
    2. Interactive systems and tools
  2. Visualization
    1. Visualization application domains
      1. Visual analytics
2. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval
    1. Users and interactive retrieval
      1. Search interfaces

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems

ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems Volume 7, Issue 4

Special Issue on IUI 2016 Highlights

December 2017

134 pages

ISSN:2160-6455

EISSN:2160-6463

DOI:10.1145/3166060

Editor:
Michelle Zhou
Juji, Inc., USA

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Copyright © 2017 ACM.

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Publication History

Published: 13 December 2017

Accepted: 01 February 2017

Revised: 01 November 2016

Received: 01 July 2016

Published in TIIS Volume 7, Issue 4

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Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG)
Austrian COMET Program
European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), project EEXCESS

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Cited By

Chatti MGuesmi MMuslim A(2024)Visualization for Recommendation Explainability: A Survey and New PerspectivesACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems10.1145/367227614:3(1-40)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672276
Soufan A(2023)Towards Understanding and Supporting Exploratory SearchesProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3576840.3578304(490-494)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3576840.3578304
He CMicallef LSerim BVuong TRuotsalo TJacucci G(2023)Interactive visual facets to support fluid exploratory searchJournal of Visualization10.1007/s12650-022-00865-426:1(211-230)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s12650-022-00865-4
Saddal MRashid UKhattak AFarooq G(2022)ISRE-Framework: nonlinear and multimodal exploration of image search result spacesMultimedia Tools and Applications10.1007/s11042-022-12561-481:19(27275-27308)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11042-022-12561-4
Hoeber OShukla S(2022)A study of visually linked keywords to support exploratory browsing in academic searchJournal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.2462373:8(1171-1191)Online publication date: 10-Feb-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24623
di Sciascio CVeas EBarria-Pineda JCulley CPaternò FOliver NConati CSpano LTintarev N(2020)Understanding the effects of control and transparency in searching as learningProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces10.1145/3377325.3377524(498-509)Online publication date: 17-Mar-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3377325.3377524
van Capelleveen Gvan Wieren JAmrit CYazan DZijm H(2020)Exploring recommendations for circular supply chain management through interactive visualisationDecision Support Systems10.1016/j.dss.2020.113431(113431)Online publication date: Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dss.2020.113431
Ortiz MKim HWang MSeki KMostafa JShi XBuck MMa JVeltri P(2019)Dynamic Cluster-based Retrieval and Discovery for Biomedical LiteratureProceedings of the 10th ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology and Health Informatics10.1145/3307339.3342191(390-396)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2019
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Sciascio CBrusilovsky PTrattner CVeas E(2019)A Roadmap to User-Controllable Social Exploratory SearchACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems10.1145/324138210:1(1-38)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2019
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Fessl AApaolaza AGledson APammer-Schindler VVigo M(2019)“Mirror, mirror on my search...”: Data-Driven Reflection and Experimentation with Search BehaviourTransforming Learning with Meaningful Technologies10.1007/978-3-030-29736-7_7(83-97)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-29736-7_7

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