Users can change their web search tactics: Design guidelines for categorized overviews

Categorized overviews of web search results are a promising way to support user exploration, understanding, and discovery. These search interfaces combine a metadatabased overview with the list of search results to enable a rich form of interaction. A study of 24 sophisticated users carrying out complex tasks suggests how searchers may adapt their search tactics when using categorized overviews. This mixed methods study evaluated categorized overviews of web search results organized into thematic, geographic, and government categories. Participants conducted four exploratory searches during a 2-hour session to generate ideas for newspaper articles about specified topics such as “human smuggling.” Results showed that subjects explored deeper while feeling more organized, and that the categorized overview helped subjects better assess their results, although no significant differences were detected in the quality of the article ideas. A qualitative analysis of searcher comments identified seven tactics that participants reported adopting when using categorized overviews. This paper concludes by proposing a set of guidelines for the design of exploratory search interfaces. An understanding of the impact of categorized overviews on search tactics will be useful to web search researchers, search interface designers, information architects and web developers. * Author’s current address: The School of Library and Information Science, The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC 20064. Prioritized Open Issues/Questions/To Dos • Finish related work section • Convert to IP&M submission format • Consider moving tables 4-7 to appendix or deleting. If we delete, we should revise description of qualitative analysis to explain that codes are available in dissertation. • Consider another guideline: provide clear feedback on selected/narrowed categories • Should we include any appendices? E.g. questionnaires. I’m inclined not to. • Verify consistent use of “categories” instead of “classifications”, except where we are specifically discussing classifications • Down to 12,600 words... still long, but probably okay for submission.