Driven
by the explosion of information sources available on the web, search
engines play an important role in helping users find information from
these sources. Because of this, research on information seeking behavior
is increasingly important. In her thesis 'Understanding and Supporting
Information Seeking Tasks Across Multiple Sources' Alia Amin, from the
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam, investigates
complex information seeking behavior across multiple sources and how
novel interfaces support specific aspects of these information seeking
tasks. On 8th December, she defends her thesis at the University of
Amsterdam. The results of her research are of potential interest for
different users, including cultural heritage and e-Humanities
researchers and mobile search providers.
Part of Amin’s
research focuses on how search behavior is influenced by different user
types and different domains. Amin studied the search behavior of experts
from the cultural heritage domain and that of lay users in the domain
of mobile search. Domain experts make use of multiple sources in their
in search tasks such as internet, databases and digital libraries. Also
in mobile search multiple applications are used, for instance a search
application in combination with Google maps. Complex search behavior
across multiple sources poses new requirements on the presentation of
information and navigation through multiple sources. Amin identifies a
number of these requirements and discusses examples of novel interfaces
to support specific search tasks across multiple sources.
Search
tasks can range from specific questions to complex and vague tasks. An
example of an interface that Amin proposes is based on
'auto-completion'. This interface interacts with the user by giving
suggestions. For instance when searching for the term 'Haarlem', the
user will be given the suggestion 'Which Haarlem do you mean?’. In
another application, Amin discusses transparency of information. For
instance, the search term 'The Night Watch by Rembrandt' may result in
thousands of related resources. The interface of Amin automatically
presents a selection of the most reliable sources for the user. This
principle of transparency is also applied to mobile search tasks such as
‘Indian restaurants in the center of Berlin’. Amin's novel interfaces
allow users to find a suitable response to their specific search task
more quickly and more effectively.
The Web provides access to
many different data sources. Amin's research makes an important
contribution to the design and evaluation of interfaces for accessing
multiple Web data sources. The results of the research provide signposts
for the large amount of research that lies ahead in this
multidisciplinary research area. Various new questions arise with the
explosive amount of digital data produced and consumed by society and
science. This is an important research theme at CWI.
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