Visualization support for interactive query refinement

Abstract

It has been well documented that Web searchers have difficulties crafting queries to fulfill their information needs. In this work, we use a concept knowledge base generated from the ACM computing classification system to generate a query space that represents the query terms in relation to the concepts they describe and the other terms that are related to these concepts. A visual representation of this query space allows the user to interpret the relationships between their query terms and the query space. Interactive query refinement within this visual representation takes advantage of the user's visual information processing abilities, and allows the user to choose terms that accurately represent their information need. A preview of the search results from Google provides the user with an indication of the current state of their query refinement process. This work allows the user to take an active role in the information retrieval process, supporting the fundamental shift from information retrieval systems to information retrieval support systems.