ABSTRACT
Web users can help guide others through complex tasks in unfamiliar domains by creating ordered sequences of queries and Web pages, an activity we call trailblazing. The trails generated from this process can be surfaced by search engines to help users engaged in these tasks. However, if search engines are going to have people generate trails they need to understand whether there is value in using domain experts for trailblazing (or whether novices are sufficient). In this paper, we describe the findings of a user study of trailblazing in the medical domain, comparing domain novices and experts. We observed differences in how people in each of the groups blazed trails and the value of the trails they generated; experts were more efficient and generated better-quality trails. Although there has been significant research on contrasting novice and expert search behaviors, to our knowledge there is no work (at least in the search domain) on establishing whether artifacts created by domain experts (trails in our case) are more valuable than those created by novices. The answer to this question is important for system designers who want to learn whether investing in domain expertise is worthwhile.
- Agichtein, E., Brill, E., and Dumais, S. Improving web search ranking by incorporating user behavior information. SIGIR, (2006), 19--26. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Allen, B. L. Topic knowledge and online catalog search formulation. Lib. Quart. 61, 2, (1991), 188--213.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Bates, M. J. The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the online search interface. Online Review 13, 5, (1989), 407--424.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Bhavnani, S. K. Important cognitive components of domain-specific search knowledge. TREC, (2001), 571--578.Google Scholar
- Bhavnani, S. K. Domain-specific search strategies for the effective retrieval of healthcare and shopping information. SIGCHI, (2002), 610--611. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bilenko, M. and White, R. W. Mining the search trails of surfing crowds: identifying relevant websites from user activity. WWW, (2008), 51--60. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Borlund, P. Experimental components for the evaluation of interaction information retrieval systems. Journal of Documentation 56, 1, (2000), 71--90.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Bush, V. As we may think. Atlantic Monthly 3, 2, (1945), 37--46. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Cartright, M., White, R. W., and Horvitz, E. Intentions and attention in exploratory health search. SIGIR, (2011), 65--74. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Chalmers, M., Rodden, K., and Brodbeck, D. The order of things: activity-centered information access. WWW, (1998). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Collins-Thompson, K. and Callan, J. P. A language modeling approach to predicting reading difficulty. HLT-NAACL, (2004), 193--200.Google Scholar
- Fu, W.-T. and Pirolli, P. SNIF-ACT: a cognitive model of user navigation on the world wide web. HumanComputer Interaction 22, 4, (2007), 355--412. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Guinan, C. and Smeaton, A. F. Information retrieval from hypertext using dynamically planned guided tours. ECHT, (1993), 122--130. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Hammond, N. and Allison, L. Travels around a learning support environment: rambling, orienteering, or touring? SIGCHI, (1988), 269--273. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Joachims, T. Optimizing search engines using clickthrough data. SIGKDD, (2002), 133--142. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Joachims, T., Freitag, D. and Mitchell, T. WebWatcher: a tour guide for the world wide web. IJCAI, (1997), 770--775.Google Scholar
- Olston, C. and Chi, E. ScentTrails: Integrating browsing and searching on the web. TOCHI 10, 3, (2003), 1--21. Google ScholarDigital Library
- O'Day, V. and Jeffries, R. Orienteering in an information landscape: how information seekers get from here to there. INTERCHI, (1993), 438--445. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pandit, S. and Olston, C. Navigation-aided retrieval. WWW, (2007), 391--400. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Pirolli, P. and Card, S. K. Information foraging. Psychological Review 106, 4, (1999), 643--675.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T. and Olmstead, K. Understanding the participatory news consumer. Pew Internet & American Life Proj., (2010).Google Scholar
- Schwarz, J. and Morris, M. R. Augmenting web pages and search results to support credibility assessment. SIGCHI, (2011), 1245--1254. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Singhal, A. Modern information retrieval: a brief overview. Bulletin of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Communication on Data Engineer. 24, 4, (2001), 35--43.Google Scholar
- Singla, A., White, R. W., and Huang, J. Studying trailfinding algorithms for enhanced web search. SIGIR, (2010), 443--450. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Teevan, J., Alvarado, C., Ackerman, M. S., and Karger, D. R. The perfect search engine is not enough: A study of orienteering behavior in directed search. SIGCHI, (2004), 415--422. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Teevan, J. Adar, E., Jones, R., and Potts, M. A. S. Information re-retrieval: repeat queries in Yahoo's logs. SIGIR, (2007), 151--158. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Trigg, R. H. Guided tours and tabletops: tools for communicating in a hypertext environment. TOIS 6, 4, (1988). Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wexelblat, A. and Maes, P. Footprints: history-rich tools for information foraging. SIGCHI, (1999), 270--277. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wheeldon, R. and Levene, M. The best trail algorithm for assisted navigation of web sites. LA-WEB, (2003). Google ScholarDigital Library
- White, R.W., Bilenko, M., and Cucerzan, S. Studying the use of popular destinations to enhance web search interaction. SIGIR, (2007), 159--166. Google ScholarDigital Library
- White, R. W. and Drucker, S. M. Investigating behavioral variability in web search. WWW, (2007), 21--30. Google ScholarDigital Library
- White, R. W., Dumais, S. T., and Teevan, J. Characterizing the influence of domain expertise on web search behavior. WSDM, (2009), 132--141. Google ScholarDigital Library
- White, R. W. and Horvitz, E. Cyberchondria: studies of the escalation of medical concerns in web search. TOIS 27, 4, (2009). Google ScholarDigital Library
- White, R. W. and Huang, J. Assessing the scenic route: measuring the value of search trails in web logs. SIGIR, (2010), 587--594. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wildemuth, B. M. The effects of domain knowledge on search tactic formulation. JASIST 55, 3, (2004), 246--258. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Yuan, X., Zhang, X.-M., and Trofimvosky, A. (2010). Testing visualization on the use of information systems. IIiX, 365--369. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Zellweger, P. T. (1989). Scripted documents: a hypermedia path mechanism. Hypertext, 1--14. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Zhang, X., Anghelescu, H. G. B., and Yuan, X. (2005). Domain knowledge, search behavior, and search effectiveness of engineering and science students. Information Research 10, 2, 217.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Building the trail best traveled: effects of domain knowledge on web search trailblazing
Recommendations
Differences in the Use of Search Assistance for Tasks of Varying Complexity
SIGIR '15: Proceedings of the 38th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information RetrievalIn this paper, we study how users interact with a search assistance tool while completing tasks of varying complexity. We designed a novel tool referred to as the search guide (SG) that displays the search trails (queries issued, results clicked, pages ...
Integrated graphical approach to knowledge representation and acquisition
An approach toward improving the accessbility of the knowledge and information structures of expert systems is described; it is based upon a foundation development environment called the Rule-Based Frame System (RBFS), which forms the kernel of a larger ...
The role of expertise in aiding video search
CIVR '09: Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Image and Video RetrievalThe importance of expertise for effective video search is not well understood. To address this problem we investigate the role of expertise in video search. In our evaluation participants were given a number of video search topics and asked to find ...
Comments