Cerchiamo: a collaborative exploratory search tool (original) (raw)

Collaborative Browsing and Visualisation of the Search Process

1996

The term browsing is frequently applied to information searching activities although it is has been defined in many different ways 4 . In this paper we highlight the social and collaborative aspects of browsing and discuss how they may be assisted by explicit computerised support. Specifically, we describe the Ariadne system -an interface which visualises the search process as a manipulable digital object. Visualisation of the process offers a range of activities that can support more effective searching activities by individuals and through collaboration with others.

The role of communication in collaborative information searching

Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2008

Collaboration plays an important role in the information seeking and retrieval activities within a team setting. In this research, we examined the impact of collaborative design features in two information retrieval tools that explicitly support collaboration. We designed the two collaborative information searching prototype, MUSE (Multi-User Search Engine) and MUST (Multi-User Search and Talk) and evaluated both systems. Results indicate that the communication (i.e., chat) function played an important role in enhancing the information seeking process by establishing common ground among group members. We also identified unexpected challenges that arose as the prototypes were used during these activities. These challenges were both technical and social in nature. We discuss implications for system design and directions for future research.

Algorithmic mediation for collaborative exploratory search

Proceedings of the 31st annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval - SIGIR '08, 2008

We describe a new approach to information retrieval: algorithmic mediation for intentional, synchronous collaborative exploratory search. Using our system, two or more users with a common information need search together, simultaneously. The collaborative system provides tools, user interfaces and, most importantly, algorithmically-mediated retrieval to focus, enhance and augment the team's search and communication activities. Collaborative search outperformed post hoc merging of similarly instrumented single user runs. Algorithmic mediation improved both collaborative search (allowing a team of searchers to find relevant information more efficiently and effectively), and exploratory search (allowing the searchers to find relevant information that cannot be found while working individually).

Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval: Techniques and Evaluation

2009

Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval refers to systems that support multiple users searching together at the same time in order to satisfy a shared information need. To date most SCIR systems have focussed on providing various awareness tools in order to enable collaborating users to coordinate the search task. However, requiring users to both search and coordinate the group activity may prove too demanding. On the other hand without effective coordination policies the group search may not be effective. In this paper we propose and evaluate novel system-mediated techniques for coordinating a group search. These techniques allow for an effective division of labour across the group whereby each group member can explore a subset of the search space. We also propose and evaluate techniques to support automated sharing of knowledge across searchers in SCIR, through novel collaborative and complementary relevance feedback techniques. In order to evaluate these techniques, we propose a framework for SCIR evaluation based on simulations. To populate these simulations we extract data from TREC interactive search logs. This work represent the first simulations of SCIR to date and the first such use of this TREC data.

An investigation of the effects of awareness and task orientation on collaborative search

Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2014

Collaborative search is concerned with how people work together to address a common information need. In this paper, we investigate two factors that may influence collaborative search behaviors: providing awareness information about collaborators' prior activities, and the orientation of the shared task. For awareness, we examined two levels: an aware condition in which participants could see their collaborators' prior activity in the system, and a non-aware condition in which they could only see their own history. For orientation, we investigated a task with an open set of goals compared to a recall-oriented task that asked participants to find as many relevant documents as possible. Forty-one participants in a laboratory study used a prototype system called ResultsSpace to complete an asynchronous collaborative search task with three simulated collaborators. We developed a novel set of measures for examining collaborative behavior, and found that participants who were aware of their collaborators' prior actions issued more query terms in common with their collaborators and tended to avoid rating or viewing documents that collaborators had already rated as compared to the non-aware group. We also observed an interaction between awareness and task-orientation in terms of the number of unique documents found, suggesting that task orientation could change the direction of the effect of awareness on document space exploration.

Interactive multimedia search: Systems for exploration and collaboration

2008

We have developed an interactive video search system that allows the searcher to rapidly assess query results and easily pivot off those results to form new queries. The system is intended to maximize the use of the discriminative power of the human searcher. The typical video search scenario we consider has a single searcher with the ability to search with text and content-based queries. In this paper, we evaluate a new collaborative modification of our search system. Using our system, two or more users with a common information need search together, simultaneously. The collaborative system provides tools, user interfaces and, most importantly, algorithmically-mediated retrieval to focus, enhance and augment the team's search and communication activities. In our evaluations, algorithmic mediation improved the collaborative performance of both retrieval (allowing a team of searchers to find relevant information more efficiently and effectively), and exploration (allowing the searchers to find relevant information that cannot be found while working individually). We present analysis and conclusions from comparative evaluations of the search system.

Representation of Collaborative Search Results Using Faceted Search

2010

This paper describes the design and implementation of a web-based, faceted interface for searching and displaying web pages saved from collaborative information seeking using the Results Space framework. Results Space project is part of Interaction Design Lab at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Results Space project focuses on managing search results across multiple sessions and multiple collaborators. This paper describes the implementation of the web-interface that enables presentation of these collaborative results using faceted search. Once a user has worked on any collaborative project she needs to view and interact with the results. An ability to view the results across multiple facets like projects, collaborators and sources provides the user with a better depiction of the search efforts. This functionality can be further enhanced using different representations in which the user can view the search results. This paper discusses the process of developing a web application that provides such faceted search interface and representation of the search results using timeline and table view. Headings: Results Space Collaborative search Faceted Search Graphical representation Timeline View REPRESENTATION OF COLLABORATIVE SEARCH RESULTS USING FACETED SEARCH

Awareness in Collaborative Information Seeking

2010

Support for explicit collaboration in information-seeking activities is increasingly recognized as a desideratum for search systems. Several tools have emerged recently that help groups of people with the same information-seeking goals to work together. Many issues for these collaborative information-seeking (CIS) environments remain understudied.The authors identified awareness as one of these issues in CIS, and they presented a user study that involved 42 pairs of participants, who worked in collaboration over 2 sessions with 3 instances of the authors' CIS system for exploratory search. They showed that while having awareness of personal actions and history is important for exploratory search tasks spanning multiple sessions, support for group awareness is even more significant for effective collaboration. In addition, they showed that support for such group awareness can be provided without compromising usability or introducing additional load on the users.

Trailblazer - Towards the Design of an Exploratory Search User Interface

2012

When conceptualizing user interfaces (UIs) to support exploratory search, designers need to take into account various aspects. In contrast to ordinary information retrieval UIs, exploratory search user interfaces (XSIs) need to support users in a more complex and often long term use scenario. An XSI needs to provide a visually appealing overview over retrieved search results, it should offer simple ways to interact with the result set and offer easy ways of interaction to enhance the user’s search experience by direct or indirect query refinement options. In this paper we identify the requirements of a specific XSI concept, describe this XSI concept and its features & present first results of a conducted usability study.