Abdigani Diriye

Leaving so soon?: understanding and predicting web search abandonment rationales

Users of search engines often abandon their searches. Despite the high frequency of Web search abandonment and its importance to Web search engines, little is known about why searchers abandon beyond that it can be for good or bad reasons. In this paper, we ex-tend previous work by studying search abandonment using both a retrospective survey and an in-situ method that captures aban-donment rationales at abandonment time. We show that although satisfaction is a common motivator for abandonment, one-in-five abandonment instances does not relate to satisfaction. We also studied the automatic prediction of the underlying reason for ob-served abandonment. We used features of the query and the results, interaction with the result page (e.g., cursor movements, scrolling, clicks), and the full search session. We show that our classifiers can learn to accurately predict the reasons for observed search abandonment. Such accurate predictions help search providers estimate user satisfaction for queries without clicks, affording a more complete understanding of search engine performance.

The future is in the past: designing for exploratory search

Exploratory search activities tend to span multiple sessions and involve finding, analyzing and evaluating information found through many queries. Typical search systems, on the other hand, are designed to support single query, precision-oriented search tasks. We describe a search interface and system design of a multi-session exploratory search system, discuss design challenges encountered, and chronicle the evolution of our design. Our design describes novel displays for visualizing retrieval history information, and introduces ambient displays and persuasive elements to interactive information retrieval.

A polyrepresentational approach to interactive query expansion

Interactive Query Expansion (IQE) presents suggested terms to the user during their search to enable better Information Retrieval (IR). However, IQE terms are poorly used, and tend to lack information meaningful to the user. The lack of cognitive and functional support during query refinement is a well documented problem, and despite the work carried out, it is still an under researched area. This stagnation in progress has been partly due to the long held belief that users are able to make good IQE term selections, and that the de facto way IQE terms are presented is effective. In this paper, we introduce a novel method to improve the presentation of IQE terms by providing supplementary information alongside them. We describe a user study that compared our novel polyrepresentational approach to IQE against a conventional IQE system and a baseline system. Our findings have shown that a polyrepresentational approach to IQE can address the ambiguity and uncertainty surrounding IQE, and improve the perceived usefulness of the terms.

Costs and benefits of structured information foraging

People spend an enormous amount of time searching for and saving information online. Existing tools capture only a small portion of the cognitive processing a user engages in while making sense of a new domain. In this paper we introduce a novel interface for capturing online information in a structured but lightweight way. We use this interface as a platform to experimentally characterize the costs and benefits of structuring information during the sensemaking process. Our results contribute empirical knowledge relevant to theories of information seeking and sensemaking, and practical implications for the development of tools to capture and share online information.

Designing a tool for exploratory information seeking

We describe an on-going design process in building Querium, a search system for multi-session exploratory search tasks. Querium extends a conventional search interface with a sophisticated search history interface that helps people make sense of their search activity over time. Information seeking is a cognitively demanding process that can benefit from many kinds of information. Our design process has focused on creating interfaces that facilitate on-going sense-making while keeping the interaction efficient, fluid, and enjoyable.

Querium: a session-based collaborative search system

Peoples information-seeking can span multiple sessions, and can be collaborative in nature. Existing commercial offerings do not effectively support searchers to share, save, collaborate or revisit their information. In this demo paper we present Querium: a novel session-based collaborative search system that lets users search, share, resume and collaborate with other users. Querium provides a number of novel search features in a collaborative setting, including relevance feedback, query fusion, faceted search, and search histories.

The Role of Search Interface Features during Information Seeking

In this paper, we examine the role search interface features play in information seeking across different categories and complexities of search tasks. We present a system called Search Buddy that provides features to enable exploration, filtering and browsing of information. Differing categories and complexities of search tasks were studied through qualitative and quantitative methods. We find specific user patterns in the frequency, points and context of search interface usage. This study highlight the potential value of contextualizing interface features to the type of task and stage of information seeking.

A little interaction can go a long way: enriching the query formulation process

This poster argues for a need for more dialogue and richer information and interaction during query formulation between the user and the system. We present two novel methods --- query previews and categorised Interactive Query Expansions --- that seek to do just this. Our method enriches a searchers query formulation by leveraging semantic information to help identify the topicality of the term, and the outcomes of its selection. The initial findings are largely positive and suggest user preference.

NewsRoom: an information-seeking support system for news videos

In this demo paper we introduce NewsRoom, a prototype multimedia retrieval system that records, segments and indexes news to support browsing and searching of news stories. NewsRoom supports peoples various searching behaviours through a rich and highly interactive interface. In this paper we describe the development and functionality of the system, and present the interface design philosophy behind NewsRoom that seeks to further support peoples information interactions.