Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The use of Web search engines constitutes an important part of the activities that people perform on the Web. While significant effort has gone into the creation of Web search engines that can index billions of documents and return the results in fractions of a second, the interfaces used by the top search engines have remained essentially unchanged since the early days of the Web. Little support is provided for searchers as they attempt to craft a query. Even if they are able to provide a good query, the commonly used list-based representation does little to assist searchers in finding the information they seek. The research program described in this proposal is a logical extension of Dr. Hoeber's recent Ph.D. work. The goal is to investigate the use of visualization and interaction techniques as a means for supporting the fundamental tasks Web searchers perform. Intelligent methods for displaying, organizing, and interacting with the information present in Web search tasks will lead to advancements in the interfaces used by Web search engines. These next-generation Web search interfaces will have a significant impact on how people search for and find information in the future. By taking advantage of our ability to visually process information, the cognitive burden associated with searching the Web can be reduced. Searchers will be able to recognize and explore elements of interest, rather than having to remember specific details. Overviews of five research projects are provided in the proposal, focusing on personalization within Web search tasks, visual representations of Web search results, studies on interactive exploration of Web search results, visual representations of free-text queries, and using visualization to assist in re-finding information. This program of research illustrates the breadth and depth of investigations that can be undertaken in the area of visual and interactive Web search. The design, development, and study of prototype systems throughout these and other research projects will contribute to our understanding of how visualization and interaction can be used to support the human element in Web search.