Chapter 9: User Interfaces and

Visualizations
Adama Science and Technology University
School of Electrical Engineering and Computing
Department of CSE
Dr. Mesfin Abebe Haile (2024)
 Content

 User interface and visualizations:

 The information access process
 Context and query specification
 Using relevance judgment and interface support for the search
process

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 Information Access Process

 The user interface role is to aid in the users’ understanding and

expression of their information need.

 Further, the interface should help users:

 Formulate their queries,
 Select among available information sources,
 Understand search results,
 Keep track of the progress of their search.

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 Information Access Process

 Exploratory search is divided into learning and

investigating tasks.

 Learning search:
 Requires more than single query-response pairs.
 Requires the searcher to spend time.
 Scanning and reading multiple information items.
 Synthesizing content to form new understanding.

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 Information Access Process

 Exploratory search is divided into learning and

investigating tasks.
 Investigating refers to a longer-term process which:
 Involves multiple iterations that take place over perhaps very
long periods of time.
 May return results that are critically assessed before being
integrated into personal and professional knowledge bases.
 May be concerned with finding a large proportion of the relevant
information available.

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 Classic Vs Dynamic Models of
Information Seeking
 Classic notion of the information seeking process: (need static)
 Problem identification,
 Articulation of information need(s),
 Query formulation,
 Results evaluation,
 More recent models emphasize the dynamic nature of the search
process:
 The users learn as they search.
 Their information needs adjust as they see retrieval results and
other document surrogates.
 This dynamic process is sometimes referred to as the berry picking
model of search.
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 Classic Vs Dynamic Models of
Information Seeking
 The rapid response times of today’s Web search engines allow
searchers:
 To look at the results that come back.
 To reformulate their query based on these results.
 This kind of behavior is a commonly-observed strategy within
the berry-picking approach.

 Jansen et al. made an analysis of search logs and found that the
proportion of users who modified queries is 52%.

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 Classic Vs Dynamic Models of
Information Seeking
 Some seeking models cast the process in terms of strategies and
how choices for next steps are made:
 In some cases, these models are meant to reflect conscious
planning behavior by expert searchers.
 In others, the models are meant to capture the less planned,
potentially more reactive behavior of a typical information seeker.

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 Navigation Vs Search

 Navigation: the searcher looks at an information structure and browses

among the available information.
 This browsing strategy is preferred when the information
structure is well-matched to the user’s information need.
 It is mentally less challenging to recognize a piece of information than it is
to recall it.
 It works well only so long as appropriate links are available.

 If the links are not available, then the browsing experience might be
frustrating.

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 Search Process

 Numerous studies have been made of people engaged in the

search process. The results of these studies can help guide the
design of search interfaces.
 One common observation is that users often reformulate their
queries with slight modifications.
 Another is that searchers often search for information that they
have previously accessed.
 The users’ search strategies differ when searching over previously
seen materials.
 Researchers have developed search interfaces support both
query history and re-visitation.
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 Search Process

 Studies also show that it is difficult for people to determine

whether or not a document is relevant to a topic.
 The less users know about a topic, the poorer judges they are
about if a search result is relevant to that topic.

 Other studies found that searchers tend to look at only the top-
ranked retrieved results.
 Further, they are biased towards thinking the top one or two
results are better than those beneath them.

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 Search Process

 Other studies found that searchers tend to look at only the top-
ranked retrieved results.

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 Search Process

 Other studies found that searchers tend to look at only the top-
ranked retrieved results.

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 Search Process

 Studies also show that people are poor at estimating

how much of the relevant material they have found.
 Other studies have assessed the effects of knowledge of
the search process itself.

 These studies have observed that experts use different

strategies than novices searchers.
 For instance, Tabatabai et al. found that:
 Expert searchers were more patient than novices.
 This positive attitude led to better search outcomes.
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 Query Specification Interface

 Some entry forms are followed by a form that filters the query in some way. For instance, at
yelp.com, the user can refine the search by location using a second form.
 Notice that the yelp.com form also shows the user’s home location, if it has been specified previously.

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 Query Specification Interface

 Some interfaces show a list of query suggestions as the user types the query.
 This is referred to as auto-complete, auto-suggest, or dynamic query suggestions.
 Often the suggestions shown are those whose prefix matches the characters
typed so far.
 However, in some cases, suggestions are shown that only have interior letters
matching.
 Further, suggestions may be shown that are synonyms of the words typed so
far.

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 Query Specification Interface

 Dynamic query suggestions, from Netflix.com

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 Retrieval Results Display

 When displaying search results, either:

 The documents must be shown in full, or else
 The searcher must be presented with some kind of representation
of the content of those documents.
 The document surrogate refers to the information that
summarizes the document.
 This information is a key part of the success of the search interface
 The design of document surrogates is an active area of research
and experimentation.
 The quality of the surrogate can greatly effect the perceived
relevance of the search results listing.
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Retrieval Results Display

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 Retrieval Results Display

 In Web search, the page title is usually shown prominently, along with
the URL and other metadata.
 In search over information collections, metadata such as date
published and author are often displayed.
 Text summary (or snippet) containing text extracted from the
document is also critical.
 Currently, the standard results display is a vertical list of textual
summaries.
 This list is sometimes referred to as the SERP (Search Engine Results
Page).

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 Retrieval Results Display

 In some cases the summaries are extracts drawn from the full text
that contain the query terms.
 In other cases, specialized kinds of metadata are shown in
addition to standard textual results.
 This technique is known as blended results or universal search.
 For example, a query on a term like “rainbow” may return sample
images as one entry in the results listing.

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 Retrieval Results Display

 A query on the name of a sports team (e.g., “rockets”) might retrieve the latest game scores and a link to buy tickets.

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 Question & Answer

06/20/24 23
 Thank You !!!

06/20/24 24