We developed and evaluated seven interfaces for integrating semantic category information with Web search results. List interfaces were based on the familiar ranked-listing of search results, sometimes augmented with a category name for each result. Category interfaces also showed page titles and/or category names, but re-organized the search results so that items in the same category were grouped together visually. Our user studies show that all Category interfaces were more effective than List interfaces even when lists were augmented

Question answering systems have proven to be helpful to users because they can provide succinct answers that do not require users to wade through a large number of documents. However, despite recent advances in the underlying question answering technology, the problem of designing effective interfaces has been largely unexplored. We conducted a user study to investigate this area and discovered that, overall, users prefer paragraph-sized chunks of text over just an exact phrase as the answer to their questions. Furthermore, users generally prefer answers embedded in context, regardless of the perceived reliability of the source documents. When researching a topic, increasing the amount of text returned to users significantly decreases the number of queries that they pose to the system, suggesting that users utilize supporting text to answer related questions. We believe that these results can serve to guide future developments in question answering interfaces.

Despite recent advances in natural language question answering technology, the problem of designing effective user interfaces has been largely unexplored. We conducted a user study to investigate the problem and discovered that overall, users prefer a paragraph-sized chunk of text over just an exact phrase as the answer to their questions. Furthermore, users generally prefer answers embedded in context, regardless of the perceived reliability of the source documents. When users research a topic, increasing the amount of text returned to users significantly decreases the number of queries that they pose to the system, suggesting that users utilize supporting text to answer related questions. We believe that these results can serve to guide future developments in question answering user interfaces.

We present in this paper the design and an evaluation of a novel interface called the Relation Browser++ (RB++) for searching and browsing large information collections. RB++ provides visualized category overviews of an information space and allows dynamic filtering and exploration of the result set by tightly coupling the browsing and searching functions. A user study was conducted to compare the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction of completing various types of searching and browsing using the RB++ interface and a traditional formfillin interface for a video library. An exploration set of tasks was also included to examine the effectiveness of and user satisfaction with the RB++ when applied to a large federal statistics website. The comparison study strongly supported that RB++ was more effective, efficient, and satisfying for completing data exploration tasks. Based on the results, efforts to automatically populate the underlying database using machine learning techniques are underway. Preliminary implementations for two large-scale federal statistical websites have been installed on government servers for internal evaluation. Categories and Subject Descriptors:H.5.2 [Information Interfaces and presentation (e.g. HCI)]: User Interface- interaction style, graphical user interfaces (GUI);H.3.3 [Information Storage and Retrieval]: Information Search and Retrieval- query formulation,

Previews and overviews of large, heterogeneous information resources help users comprehend the scope of collections and focus on particular subsets of interest. For narrative documents, questions of "what happened? where? and when?" are natural points of entry. Building on our earlier work at the Perseus Project with detecting terms, place names, and dates, we have exploited co-occurrences of dates and place names to detect and describe likely events in document collections. We compare statistical measures for determining the relative significance of various events. We have built interfaces that help users preview likely regions of interest for a given range of space and time by plotting the distribution and relevance of various collocations. Users can also control the amount of collocation information in each view. Once particular collocations are selected, the system can identify key phrases associated with each possible event to organize browsing of the documents themselves.

A key to the Web's success is the power of search. The elegant way in which search results are returned is usually remarkably effective. However, for exploratory search in which users need to learn, discover, and understand novel or complex topics, there is substantial room for improvement. Human computer interaction researchers and web browser designers have developed novel strategies to improve Web search by enabling users to conveniently visualize, manipulate, and organize their Web search results. This monograph offers fresh ways to think about search-related cognitive processes and describes innovative design approaches to browsers and related tools. For instance, while key word search presents users with results for specific information (e.g., what is the capitol of Peru), other methods may let users see and explore the contexts of their requests for information (related or previous work, conflicting information), or the properties that associate groups of information assets (group legal decisions by lead attorney).

To make good decisions, businesses try to gather good intelligence information. Yet managing and processing a large amount of unstructured information and data stand in the way of greater business knowledge. An effective business intelligence tool must be able to access quality information from a variety of sources in a variety of forms, and it must support people as they search for and analyze that information. The EBizPort system was designed to address information needs for the business/IT community. EBizPort’s collection-building process is designed to acquire credible, timely, and relevant information. The user interface provides access to collected and metasearched resources using innovative tools for summarization, categorization, and visualization. The effectiveness, efficiency, usability, and information quality of the EBizPort system were measured. EBizPort significantly outperformed Brint, a business search portal, in search effectiveness, information quality, user satisfaction, and usability. Users particularly liked EBizPort’s clean and user-friendly interface. Results from our evaluation study suggest that the visualization function added value to the search and analysis process, that the generalizable collection-building technique can be useful for domain-specific information searching on the Web, and that the search interface was important for Web search and browse support.

this paper, we propose a generic and integrated approach to searching and browsing the Internet in a multilingual world. Based on this approach, we have developed the Chinese Business Intelligence Portal (CBizPort) , a meta-search engine that searches for business information of mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Additional functions provided by CBizPort include encoding conversion (between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese), summarization, and categorization. Experimental results of our user evaluation study show that the searching and browsing performance of CBizPort was comparable to that of regional Chinese search engines, and CBizPort could significantly augment these search engines. Subjects' verbal comments indicate that CBizPort performed best in terms of analysis functions, cross-regional searching, and user-friendliness, whereas regional search engines were more efficient and more popular. Subjects especially liked CBizPort's summarizer and categorizer, which helped in understanding search results. These encouraging results suggest a promising future of our approach to Internet searching and browsing in a multilingual world

In this paper, we describe a tool that allows people to browse several characteristics of federal statistical data contained in two hundred web sites before committing to any specific site. The design process used and results from usability testing for the Relation Browser tool are presented and recommendations for comparable applications are made.

This paper describes a collaborative effort to explore user needs in a digital library, develop interface prototypes for a digital library, and suggest and prototype tools for digital librarians and users at the Library of Congress (LC). Interfaces were guided by an assessment of user needs and aimed to maximize interaction with primary resources and support both browsing and analytical search strategies. Tools to aid users and librarians in overviewing collections, previewing objects, and gathering results were created and serve as the beginnings of a digital librarian toolkit. The design process and results are described and suggestions for future work are offered. Digital Libraries (DL) offer new challenges to an emerging breed of digital librarians who must combine the principles and practices of information management with rapidly evolving technological developments to create new information products and services. This paper describes a collaborative effort to explore user needs ...