Visualizing web search results using glyphs: Design and evaluation of a flower metaphor

While the Web provides a lot of useful information to managers and decision makers in organizations for decision support, it requires a lot of time and cognitive effort for users to sift through a search result list returned by search engines to find useful information. Previous research in information visualization has shown that visualization techniques can help users comprehend information and accomplish information tasks more efficiently and effectively. However, only a limited number of such techniques have been applied to Web search result visualization with mixed evaluation results. Using a design science approach, this research designed and implemented a glyph (a graphical object that represents the values of multiple dimensions using multiple visual parameters) and a system for visualizing Web search results. A flower metaphor was adopted in the glyph design to represent the characteristics and metadata of Web documents. Following the cognitive fit theory, an experimental study was conducted to evaluate three displays: a numeric display, a glyph display, and a combined display which showed numbers only, glyphs only, and both, respectively. Experimental results showed that the glyph display and the combined display performed better when task complexity was high, and the numeric display and the combined display performed better when task complexity was low. The combined display also received the best perceived usability from the subjects. Based on the findings, the implications of the study to research and practice are discussed and some future research directions are suggested.