Although no unified definition of the concept of search strategy in Information Retrieval (IR) exists so far, its importance is manifest: nonexpert users, directly interacting with an IR system, apply alimited portfolio of simple actions; they do not know how to react in critical situations; and they often do not even realize that their difficulties are due to strategic problems. Auser interface to an IR system should therefore provide some strategic help, focusing user’s attention on strategic issues and providing tools to generate better strategies. Because neither the user nor the system can autonomously solve the information problem, but they complement each other, we propose acollaborative coaching approach,inwhichthetwopartnerscooperate:theuser retains the control of the session and the system provides suggestions. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated by a conceptual analysis, a prototype knowledge-based system named FIRE, and its evaluation through informal laboratory experiments.

this document is counted #that is when Score3 #p; t# is greater than zero for passage p in a document#. It turns out that most query terms end up with high f t values because of the approximate matches on documents. The skewed distribution of f t towards high values leads to poor discrimination of terms when similarities between documents and queries are computed #10#.

... In this paper we show how the method of hierarchical goal decomposition can be used to understand more precisely the knowledge that is required to perform information search tasks. The analysis pinpoints: (1) the critical strategies in the intermediate layers of knowledge that are known by experts searchers; (2) why such knowledge is difficult to acquire by novice searchers; (3) how the analysis provides testable predictions of behavior based on the acquisition of different types of knowledge. We conclude by discussing the advantages provided by hierarchical goal decompositions, and how such an approach can lead to the design of systems and training.

Exploring services for digital libraries (DLs) include two major paradigms, browsing and searching, as well as other services such as clustering and visualization. In this paper, we formalize and generalize DL exploring services within a DL theory. We develop theorems to indicate that browsing and searching can be converted or mapped to each other under certain conditions. The theorems guide the design and implementation of exploring services for an integrated archaeological DL, ETANA-DL. Its integrated browsing and searching can support users in moving seamlessly between these operations, minimizing context switching, and keeping users focused. It also integrates browsing and searching into a single visual interface for DL exploration. A user study to evaluate ETANA-DL’s exploring services helped validate our hypotheses.

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms and technologies necessary to customize information access to the end-user. It can be defined as the automatic adjustment of information content, structure, and presentation tailored to the individual. In this chapter, we study personalization from the viewpoint of personalizing interaction. The survey covers mechanisms for information-finding on the web, advanced information retrieval systems, dialogbased applications, and mobile access paradigms. Specific emphasis is placed on studying how users interact with an information system and how the system can encourage and foster interaction. This helps bring out the role of the personalization system as a facilitator which reconciles the user's mental model with the underlying information system's organization. Three tiers of personalization systems are presented, paying careful attention to interaction considerations. These tiers show how progressive levels of sophistication in interaction can be achieved. The chapter also surveys systems support technologies and niche application domains.

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).

This work explores the design space of user interfaces for large-scale full-text database retrieval systems. Research suggests that elements of hypertext interfaces may be merged with traditional information retrieval (IR) algorithms to produce flexible hybrid interfaces for userdirected information exploration. This work examines the effectiveness of multiple-view newspaper-like interfaces, and describes a prototype that uses newspaper-style layouts to organize information retrieval results. Finally, it explores some possible visualization techniques designed to aid browsing performance. The first of two experiments in this thesis examines the effectiveness of the simultaneous display of several documents retrieved by a given query. Experimental results suggest that viewed recall increases with increasing numbers of articles displayed on the screen simultaneously. Subjects' decision-making strategies appear to be independent of user interface factors. The second experiment tests differences in behavior between query-based and link-based browsing. Differences in performance are found between groups of users employing different strategies, but not between interface conditions. These results suggest that dynamic querymediated hypertext interfaces are viable alternatives to more explicit queries, and that subjects' intrinsic strategies have significant impact on their interaction with the system and on their performance. This work proposes an implementation of dynamic links in the WWW medium. It concludes with a discussion about the nature of hypertext interfaces and about the role of the user interface in information exploration tasks, and suggests some avenues for future research in this area.

Personalization constitutes the mechanisms necessary to automatically customize information content, structure, and presentation to the end-user to reduce information overload. Unlike traditional approaches to personalization, the central theme of our approach is to model a website as a program and conduct website transformation for personalization by program transformation (e.g., partial evaluation, program slicing). The goal of this paper is study personalization through a program transformation lens, and develop a formal model, based on program transformations, for personalized interaction with hierarchical hypermedia. The specific research issues addressed involve identifying and developing program representations and transformations suitable for classes of hierarchical hypermedia, and providing supplemental interactions for improving the personalized experience. The primary form of personalization discussed is out-of-turn interaction – a technique which empowers a user navigating a hierarchical website to postpone clicking on any of the hyperlinks presented on the current page and, instead, communicate the

This study describes how elementary school students search for and select books using a digital library. This work was done as part of the International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) project in order to explore and discover new directions for the development of digital library interfaces for children ages 3-13. Children used two versions of the ICDL software to search for, select, and read books. We performed a frequency analysis of the number of queries run, books selected, and books opened, and compared book selection rates and book opening rates. Popular query categories and titles selected are tallied. We found differences in book

Multimodal interaction is employed in a variety of contemporary information systems in order to enhance the flexibility and naturalness of the user interface. In this paper, we propose a comprehensive framework which allows the modeling and specification of multimodal interactions. To this end, we employ an extended notion of `dialogue acts' which can be performed by linguistic or non-linguistic means. On this basis we discuss the temporal structure of multimodal interaction. First, a comprehensive set of constraints is presented that describes all patterns of exchange which can be encountered during a cooperative information-seeking dialogue. Second, we introduce a strategic level of description, which allows the specification of the topical structure of the dialogue according to a selected information-seeking strategy. The model was used to design and implement the MERIT system (Multimedia Extensions to Retrieval Interaction Tools), and led to a reduction in the complexity of the use...