Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, HeatherRoinestad, and Filippo Menczer

ISI Foundation

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Demo

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

1 BackgroundSocial Linking in Other DomainsInformation Retrieval: Indexed vs. ExploratorySearch

2 Social Linking Motivation3 Study Overview4 Interface Evaluation User Study5 Review of Findings: More Found Information or More

Efficiency?

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

ArtistNet Demo

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Exploratory vs. Indexed Search

Gary Marchionini; Commun. ACM (2006): 41-46

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Other Visual Network Search Interfaces/Research

Our work differs in a few important ways, we

Use an undirected, exploration-based user study focus,rather than goal-oriented “hunt” for specific pieces ofinformation.

Use a less structured interactive result interface, allowingfor user orientation and arrangement of results andnavigation.

Leverage social link similarity data rather than contentsimilarity data.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Other Visual Network Search Interfaces/Research

Our work differs in a few important ways, we

Use an undirected, exploration-based user study focus,rather than goal-oriented “hunt” for specific pieces ofinformation.

Use a less structured interactive result interface, allowingfor user orientation and arrangement of results andnavigation.

Leverage social link similarity data rather than contentsimilarity data.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Other Visual Network Search Interfaces/Research

Our work differs in a few important ways, we

Use an undirected, exploration-based user study focus,rather than goal-oriented “hunt” for specific pieces ofinformation.

Use a less structured interactive result interface, allowingfor user orientation and arrangement of results andnavigation.

Leverage social link similarity data rather than contentsimilarity data.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Similarity network in GiveALinkMarkines et al. Hypertext 2008

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Motivation

Can we help exploratory search of results by leveraging sociallink data?

Support exploratory search interfaces in the Web.

Form an evaluation framework for socially-drivenexploratory navigation.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Motivation

Can we help exploratory search of results by leveraging sociallink data?

Support exploratory search interfaces in the Web.

Form an evaluation framework for socially-drivenexploratory navigation.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Determining and Measuring Interface Performance

What are we trying to prove/improve?

Measure annotations and queries as an indication of quality ofresults and quantity of effort (resp.) between several different(3 for our study) interface approaches.

Keep the features of all interfaces equal.

Remove “snippet text” describing each page from theresults.

Add “thumbnail hover previews” which act as visualsummaries of a webpage.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Determining and Measuring Interface Performance

What are we trying to prove/improve?Measure annotations and queries as an indication of quality ofresults and quantity of effort (resp.) between several different(3 for our study) interface approaches.

Keep the features of all interfaces equal.

Remove “snippet text” describing each page from theresults.

Add “thumbnail hover previews” which act as visualsummaries of a webpage.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Determining and Measuring Interface Performance

What are we trying to prove/improve?Measure annotations and queries as an indication of quality ofresults and quantity of effort (resp.) between several different(3 for our study) interface approaches.

Keep the features of all interfaces equal.

Remove “snippet text” describing each page from theresults.

Add “thumbnail hover previews” which act as visualsummaries of a webpage.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

User Study

Open web-based participant user study conducted with 64individuals.

Users are randomly assigned one of three interfaces toperform exploratory search

They choose from the following open-ended topics:American presidential elections electoralcollegesAlternative energy sourcesArtificial lifeImpressionismPartial differential equationsCommunism socialism fascism democracyLung cancerCosmic background radiation

They query a topic, explore results, and annotate relevantinformation

They answer supplementary exit questions

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

User Study

Open web-based participant user study conducted with 64individuals.

Users are randomly assigned one of three interfaces toperform exploratory searchThey choose from the following open-ended topics:

American presidential elections electoralcollegesAlternative energy sourcesArtificial lifeImpressionismPartial differential equationsCommunism socialism fascism democracyLung cancerCosmic background radiation

They query a topic, explore results, and annotate relevantinformation

They answer supplementary exit questions

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

User Study

Open web-based participant user study conducted with 64individuals.

Users are randomly assigned one of three interfaces toperform exploratory searchThey choose from the following open-ended topics:

American presidential elections electoralcollegesAlternative energy sourcesArtificial lifeImpressionismPartial differential equationsCommunism socialism fascism democracyLung cancerCosmic background radiation

They query a topic, explore results, and annotate relevantinformation

They answer supplementary exit questions

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

User Study

Open web-based participant user study conducted with 64individuals.

Users are randomly assigned one of three interfaces toperform exploratory searchThey choose from the following open-ended topics:

American presidential elections electoralcollegesAlternative energy sourcesArtificial lifeImpressionismPartial differential equationsCommunism socialism fascism democracyLung cancerCosmic background radiation

They query a topic, explore results, and annotate relevantinformation

They answer supplementary exit questionsVisualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Map Interface

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

List Interface

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Hybrid Interface

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Annotation Frame (All Interfaces)

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Annotations per Session

How did the different interfaces affect the number ofannotations?

Users did not produce significantly more annotations onaverage with any method (p > 0.7).

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Annotations per Session

How did the different interfaces affect the number ofannotations?

Users did not produce significantly more annotations onaverage with any method (p > 0.7).

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Queries per Session

Hybrid is better than list (p = 0.03), no other significantdifferentiations (p > 0.15)

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Interface Helped

Hybrid vs. List p = 0.02, no other significant differentiations(p > 0.13). Results are for users who submitted more than one

query.

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Review of Findings

The results of our web-based participant study.

Participants needed fewer queries to find the same amountof useful/interesting information (generate annotations).

Participants evaluated the hybrid interface better than thelist interface alone.

Questions?

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Review of Findings

The results of our web-based participant study.

Participants needed fewer queries to find the same amountof useful/interesting information (generate annotations).

Participants evaluated the hybrid interface better than thelist interface alone.

Questions?

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

Review of Findings

The results of our web-based participant study.

Participants needed fewer queries to find the same amountof useful/interesting information (generate annotations).

Participants evaluated the hybrid interface better than thelist interface alone.

Questions?

Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search

Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer