Supporting exploratory search tasks with interactive user modeling

It is becoming increasingly popular to expose government and citywide sensor data as linked data. Linked data appears to offer a great potential for exploratory search in supporting smart city goals of helping users to learn and make sense of complex and heterogeneous data. However, there are no systematic user studies to provide an insight of how browsing through linked data can support exploratory search. This paper presents a user study that draws on methodological and empirical underpinning from relevant exploratory search studies. The authors have developed a linked data browser that provides an interface for user browsing through several datasets linked via domain ontologies. In a systematic study that is qualitative and exploratory in nature, they have been able to get an insight on central issues related to exploratory search and browsing through linked data. The study identifies obstacles and challenges related to exploratory search using linked data and draws heuristics for future improvements. The authors also report main problems experienced by users while conducting exploratory search tasks, based on which requirements for algorithmic support to address the observed issues are elicited. The approach and lessons learnt can facilitate future work in browsing of linked data, and points at further issues that have to be addressed.

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Interactive user modeling: An integrative explicit-implicit approach

User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction ◽

10.1007/bf01101109 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 2 (4) ◽

pp. 331-365 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Eyal Shifroni ◽

Benny Shanon

Keyword(s):

User Modeling ◽

Implicit Approach ◽

Interactive User

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Search-logger analyzing exploratory search tasks

Proceedings of the 2011 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing - SAC '11 ◽

10.1145/1982185.1982350 ◽

2011 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Georg Singer ◽

Ulrich Norbisrath ◽

Eero Vainikko ◽

Hannu Kikkas ◽

Dirk Lewandowski

Keyword(s):

Exploratory Search ◽

Search Tasks

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Designing exploratory search tasks for user studies of information seeking support systems

Proceedings of the 2009 joint international conference on Digital libraries - JCDL '09 ◽

10.1145/1555400.1555492 ◽

2009 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Bill Kules ◽

Robert Capra

Keyword(s):

Information Seeking ◽

Support Systems ◽

User Studies ◽

Exploratory Search ◽

Search Tasks

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Improving the effectiveness of subject facets in library catalogs and beyond: a MARC-based semiautomated approach

Library Hi Tech ◽

10.1108/lht-07-2019-0132 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Andrea Cuna ◽

Gabriele Angeli

Keyword(s):

Design Methodology ◽

Exploratory Search ◽

Controlled Vocabularies ◽

Content Type ◽

Client Server ◽

Search Tasks ◽

Facet Analysis ◽

High Level ◽

User Friendly ◽

Practical Implications

PurposeThis paper puts forward a MARC-based semiautomated approach to extracting semantically rich subject facets from general and/or specialized controlled vocabularies for display in topic-oriented faceted catalog interfaces in a way that would better support users' exploratory search tasks.Design/methodology/approachHierarchical faceted subject metadata is extracted from general and/or specialized controlled vocabularies by using standard client/server communication protocols. Rigorous facet analysis, classification and linguistic principles are applied on top of that to ensure faceting accuracy and consistency.FindingsA shallow application of facet analysis and classification, together with poorly organized displays, is one of the major barriers to effective faceted navigation in library, archive and museum catalogs.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper does not deal with Web-scale discovery services.Practical implicationsThis paper offers suggestions that can be used by the technical services departments of libraries, archives and museums in designing and developing more powerful exploratory search interfaces.Originality/valueThis paper addresses the problem of deriving clearly delineated topical facets from existing metadata for display in a user-friendly, high-level topical overview that is meant to encourage a multidimensional exploration of local collections as well as “learning by browsing.”

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