A System for Cultivating Exploration Skills by Presenting Clues Based on the Analysis of Page Selection Behaviors

Abstract

Activities performed on the Web have becoming increasingly more complicated. In such activities, the importance of Web exploration through trial and error has increased. To satisfactorily conduct such exploration, it is important for users to comprehend the process of Web exploration and reflect on their search intentions when constructing queries. However, such tasks are difficult for inexperienced people. In this research, we focus on searchers' behaviors of page selection in the Web exploration process. On the basis of behavior analysis, we have developed methods to extract the clues so that unskilled searchers can become aware of the evaluation against pages they acquired and utilize them in further searches. We develop a novel mechanism for cultivating exploration skills by presenting clues in accordance with a searcher's degree of Web exploration experience. In this paper, we describe the design of a support system based on our methods and the characteristics of our prototype with some snapshots.