Do Users Benefit from Controlled Vocabularies in Search Interfaces?

Search providers in domains from medicine to news have long labelled documents with controlled vocabularies, to help users explore their collections. These vocabularies are expensive to build and use, however, and seem to be useful mostly for domain experts. This paper describes an on-going gaze-tracking study which asks whether users notice controlled vocabularies when they are exposed in a search interface; whether they make use of them; and whether this improves search. We also hope to learn what eect several standard search interfaces have on the use of controlled vocabularies.

[1]  Amanda Spink,et al.  Real life, real users, and real needs: a study and analysis of user queries on the web , 2000, Inf. Process. Manag..

[2]  Chris Buckley,et al.  OHSUMED: an interactive retrieval evaluation and new large test collection for research , 1994, SIGIR '94.

[3]  Ling Xia,et al.  Eye tracking and online search: Lessons learned and challenges ahead , 2008, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[4]  Xin Fu,et al.  Elicitation of term relevance feedback: an investigation of term source and context , 2006, SIGIR.

[5]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  Some(what) grand challenges for information retrieval , 2008, SIGF.

[6]  Ian Ruthven,et al.  Enabling Interactive Query Expansion through Eliciting the Potential Effect of Expansion Terms , 2010, ECIR.

[7]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  Ask for Information Retrieval: Part I. Background and Theory , 1997, J. Documentation.

[8]  Robert G. Capra,et al.  Influence of training and stage of search on gaze behavior in a library catalog faceted search interface , 2012, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[9]  Nina Wacholder,et al.  Interactive query formulation , 2011, Annu. Rev. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[10]  Susan T. Dumais,et al.  Individual differences in gaze patterns for web search , 2010, IIiX.

[11]  Sriram Subramanian,et al.  Talking about tactile experiences , 2013, CHI.

[12]  Max L. Wilson.  Search User Interface Design , 2011, Search User Interface Design.

[13]  Edward Cutrell,et al.  What are you looking for?: an eye-tracking study of information usage in web search , 2007, CHI.

[14]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Find What You Need, Understand What You Find , 2007, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[15]  Marianne Lykke Nielsen.  Task‐based evaluation of associative thesaurus in real‐life environment , 2005 .

[16]  James Allan,et al.  Aspect windows, 3-D visualizations, and indirect comparisons of information retrieval systems , 1998, SIGIR '98.

[17]  Kun Lu,et al.  Supporting effective health and biomedical information retrieval and navigation: A novel facet view interface evaluation , 2011, J. Biomed. Informatics.

[18]  Marti A. Hearst.  'Natural' search user interfaces , 2011, CACM.

[19]  Nina Wacholder,et al.  Do human-developed index terms help users? An experimental study of MeSH terms in biomedical searching , 2008, ASIST.

[20]  Alessio Malizia,et al.  Interfaces for the ordinary user: can we hide too much? , 2012, CACM.

[21]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  Braque: Design of an Interface to Support User Interaction in Information Retrieval , 1993, Inf. Process. Manag..

[22]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  A case for interaction: a study of interactive information retrieval behavior and effectiveness , 1996, CHI.

[23]  J. I.  The Design of Experiments , 1936, Nature.

[24]  Marti A. Hearst.  TileBars: visualization of term distribution information in full text information access , 1995, CHI '95.

[25]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  Examining the effectiveness of real-time query expansion , 2007, Inf. Process. Manag..