Web Search Interface

Significant efforts have been devoted to the design and evaluation of conventional web search interfaces (For example, [Dziadosz and Chandrasekar, 2002; Vaughan et al.,

2003; Nakarada-Kordic and Lobb, 2005; Kammerer and Gerjets, 2010; Mateosian,

2010]).

For instance, [Kang,2005] examined the effect of information search guidance in a web site on the understanding of the product and the acceptance of the Web information system. [Wildemuth, 2006] proposed an evidence-based practice to search interface design, with the goal of designing interfaces that adequately support search strategy formulation and reformulation. Furthermore, a hierarchical category browser interface for children was proposed by [Hutchinson,2003].

[Villa et al., 2009] presented a search interface, which was designed to support broad search tasks, allowing a user to create search aspects, each of which models an in- dependent subtask of some larger task. The interface was built on the intuition that users should be able to structure their searching environment when engaged on com- plex search tasks, where the act of structuring and organization may aid the user in understanding his or her task.

[Dziadosz and Chandrasekar,2002] described an empirical evaluation of the utility of thumbnail previews in web search results. Results pages were constructed to show text- only summaries, thumbnail previews only, or the combination of text summaries and thumbnail previews. It was found that in the combination case, users were able to make more accurate decisions about the potential relevance of results than in either of the other versions, with hardly any increase in speed of processing the page as a whole. “Advanced” factors such as interface attractiveness [Nakarada-Kordic and Lobb,2005] and result trustworthiness [Kammerer and Gerjets,2010] have also been evaluated. A

2.3. Result Presentation and Interface Design

taxonomy of result presentation techniques has been proposed as a reference for de- signers of web search systems [Wilson et al.,2010]. [Hearst,2009] extended the design guidelines proposed by [Nielsen, 1993] (as discussed early in this Section) to search interface design. She further explained some of the difficulties with search interface design and provided a set of design guidelines tailored specifically to search user inter- faces. These guidelines were:

• Offer efficient and informative feedback, • Balance user control with automated actions, • Reduce short-term memory load,

• Provide shortcuts, • Reduce errors,

• Recognize the importance of small details, and • Recognize the importance of aesthetics.

Search results presentation plays a critical role in the typical web search cycle [Hearst,

2009]. Appropriate representation of retrieved items is an important aspect of web search interface [Joho and Jose,2008].

There is a large body of work on effective document surrogates for web search results (For example, [Marchionini and White,2007;Clarke et al.,2007;Joho and Jose,2008;

Hearst, 2009]). In information retrieval, an alternative representation of the retrieved objects is sometimes referred to as a surrogate [Joho and Jose, 2008]. In other words, document surrogates are summary information intended to help the user understand the primary object, as opposed to metadata more broadly construed, which can also serve this purpose but is often more tailored towards use by computer programs [Hearst,

2009].

For instance, [Joho and Jose, 2008] presented a comparative evaluation of textual and visual forms of document representation as additional components of document surro- gates. The experimental results suggested that an increased level of document repre- sentation available in the search results can facilitate users’ interaction with a search interface.

While [Clarke et al., 2007] suggested on how understanding the influence of features of the captions (comprising of title, snippet, and URL) in web search may provide

2.3. Result Presentation and Interface Design

guidelines for improving web search interface. Findings from the study showed that the occurrences of certain terms like; official, attraction, sexy, etc, attracted more users’ clicks; while terms like free, encyclopedia, etc had negative influence on users’ clicks. Although, there has been significant amount of research devoted to the effective design of web search interface, yet there is very limited understanding of the design and result presentation in an aggregated interface. For instance, what is a suitable “surrogate” for representing different types of results (image, video, map, etc) on an aggregated inter- face is not known. What makes a well-designed, attractive, trustworthy and engaging aggregated search interface is not clear. In addition, how different design and visual- ization approach can be used to improve information access in an aggregated search interface is still unexplored. What is an optimum or suitable combination of results (web+image, web+image+video, etc) to be presented on an aggregated search inter- face.

2.3.4

Summary

This Section has shown that there has been many research dedicated to understand in- terface design and result presentation among various information retrieval related com- munities namely; database, digital library and web search. Several efforts have been made to generate an effective and usable interface. Many design guidelines have also been proposed in order to build a suitable result interface.

These design guidelines or result presentation approach have shown to be effective when presenting results from focused or homogeneous information collection. For in- stance, information in database or digital libraries is focused on one topic, theme or information type (document, media). But, in aggregated search, results are often het- erogeneous and includes combination of both document and media results (e.g., image, video, map, web, etc). This combination of different information “types” makes the result presentation and design of aggregated search interface more complex.

There is established understanding of what makes a usable and effective interface to present results from a database or a digital library or web search. Findings from the dedicated studies have shown on how interface design can be tailored appropriately for result presentation from the respective information collection. However, if these guidelines can also be tailored to fit into aggregated search scenario is not known. There exits many unanswered questions with respect to an aggregated search interface design and result presentation. For instance, does existing interface design guidelines