Exploratory Search Interfaces: Categorization, Clustering and Beyond -- "
Report on the XSI 2005 Workshop at the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland"
"Search engines, bibliographic databases and digital libraries provide adequate support for users whose information needs are well-defined. However, they do not work well in situations where users lack the knowledge or contextual awareness to formulate queries or navigate complex information spaces. ... In situations where information needs are vague or evolving users generally have developed coping strategies to compensate [1,2,5]. For example, they submit a tentative query that retrieves documents and browse from there, dependent solely on their ability to interpret contextual cues and navigate between documents. In short, they explore available information, selectively seeking and passively obtaining cues about where next steps lie. The goal of information exploration is the refinement of a vague information need that leads, through interaction with information objects and information resources, to a more thorough understanding of the problem. Searchers may benefit from interfaces that provide additional support, for example by enabling grouping of results and/or guided discovery processes [3,4,6]. Researchers from communities such as information retrieval, user interface design, visualization and library sciences have been working for some time on techniques to support such exploratory searches."
Posted by Gwen at June 3, 2006 05:17 PM