WMES3103: INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

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WMES3103 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

• WEEK 10 USER INTERFACES AND VISUALIZATION

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• User interfaces - communication betweeen human
  information seekers and IRS
• When users approach an IRS - unclear as to how
  they can achieve their goal

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• User interface should
• Help to understand and express information needs
• Help formulate queries
• Help select among available information sources
• Help understand search results
• Helps monitor progress of search

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HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

• 5 principles for the design of user interfaces
• offer informative feedback
• permit easy reversal of action
• support an internal locus of control
• reduce working load memory
• provide alternative interfaces for novice and
  expert users

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DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• Offer informative feedback
• important for information access interfaces
• system able to provide user with feedback about
  
• relationship between their query specification
  and the documents retrieved
• relationship among retrieved documents,
• relationships between retrieved documents and
  metadata describing collections

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• Permit easy reversal of action
• able to move back and forth between screens
• icons HOME, BACK

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DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• Support an internal locus of control
• if the user has control over how and when
  feedback is provided, then the system is said to
  provide an internal locus of control

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DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• Reduce working memory load
• information access - iterative process
• goals change when information is found
• provide mechanisms to keep track of choices made
  during the search process allowing users to
  return to temporarily abandoned strategies, jump
  from one strategy to the next and retain
  information and context across search sessions
  HISTORY LIST

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DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• provide browsable information that is relevant
  to the current stage of the information access
  process eg. suggestions of related terms or
  metadata, and search starting points including
  lists of sources and topic lists

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DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• Provide alternative interfaces for novice and
  expert users
• simple interfaces easier to learn, less
  flexible, less efficient use
• powerful interfaces allows a knowledgeable user
  to do more, more control over the operation of
  the interface, time consuming, a memory burden to
  occasional users

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DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• use scaffolding technique novice user simple
  interface that can be learned quickly, but expert
  user alternative interfaces which give more
  control, more options, more features, etc
• good user interface design provides intuitive
  bridges between the simple and the advanced
  interfaces
• how much information to show the user a major
  design choice in information access interfaces

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ROLE OF VISUALIZATION

• Tools of computer interface design windows,
  menus, icons, dialog boxes, etc use bit-mapped
  display and computer graphics to provide a more
  accessible interface than command based display
• Scientific visualization maps physical
  phenomena onto 2 or 3-dimensional representations
  eg. colorful image off the pattern and peaks on
  the ocean floor constructed from data only

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ROLE OF VISUALIZATION

• Information visualization humans highly attuned
  to images and visual information eg. remember a
  face from a picture much better than reading a
  written description of the same face
  -visualization of abstract information
• Use language to communicate abstract ideas which
  has no physical manifestation eg. how do we
  depict a picture whereby 2 parties are
  negotiating, one for concessions and the other
  not agreeing to it?

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INFORMATION ACCESS PROCESS

• 1.       Start with an information need
• 2.       Select a system and collection to search
  on
• 3.       Formulate a query
• 4.       Send query to the system
• 5.       Receive results in the form of
  information items
• 6.       Scan, evaluate, and interpret the
  results
• 7.       Either stop, or
• 8.       Reformulate the query and go to step 4

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INFORMATION ACCESS PROCESS

• Information seeking process standard
  information access process or interaction cycle
  or simple interaction model
• Used by Web search engines
• Does not take into account that most users
  dislike to see long lists of retrieved documents
  that does not answer their query directly
• Assumes user information need is static and
  information seeking process is one of
  successfully refining a query until it retrieves
  all and only those documents relevant to the
  original information need

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STARTING POINT

• Search interface - must provide good ways to get
  started
• Empty or blank screen does not provide any clues
  to help a user decide how to start the search
  process
• Users start with very short queries (testing)
  inspect results modify queries bit by bit

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STARTING POINT

• Information access interface - must help users
  select the sources and collection to search on
• lists of collections (CLJ)
• overviews ( contents of the collection, show the
  topics represented within the collection and can
  help users select or eliminate sources Yahoo)
• examples/dialogs/wizards(provides examples of
  interaction with the system)
• automated source selection (SavvySearch)

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QUERY SPECIFICATION

• To formulate a query, the user must select
  collections, metadata descriptions, or
  information sets against which the query is to be
  matched and must specify words, phrases,
  descriptors or other kinds of information that
  can be compared or matched against the
  information in the collection
• The system will create a set of documents,
  metadata, or other information type that match
  the query specifications in some sense and
  display the results to the users in some form

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QUERY SPECIFICATION

• 5 primary human-computer interaction styles -
  command language, form filling, menu selection,
  direct manipulation and natural language

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CONTEXT

• Various interface techniques for placing the
  current document set in the context of other
  document types in order to make one document set
  more understandable
• Showing the relationship of the document set to
  the query terms, collection overviews,
  descriptive metadata, hyperlink structure,
  document structure, and to other documents within
  the set.

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CONTEXT

• Most common way to show results for a query
  list information about the documents in order of
  computed relevance to the query
• according to metadata attribute document title,
  date, source, length of article
• Ranking numerical score or percentage
• Short or detailed view
• Once, document is retrieved, good to highlight
  occurrence of search term with contrasting colour
  or reverse video

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USING RELEVANCE JUDGEMENTS

• Important component of information access process
  query formulation
• Effective techniques for query formulation
  relevance feedback
• Standard interface for relevance feedback
  consists of
• List of titles with checkboxes beside the titles
  that allow the user to mark relevant documents
• Unmarked documents not relevant or no opinion

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USING RELEVANCE JUDGEMENTS

• Marked relevant
• OR
• Provide a choice among several checkboxes
  indicating relevant or not relevant (with no
  selection implying no opinion)
• OR
• Users put a value against each document to mark
  level of relevance - issues a search command -
  system re-executes the search or generates a list
  of terms for the user to select to compliment
  original query - list of new titles appear

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INTERFACE SUPPORT FOR SEARCH PROCESS

• User interface designer must make decisions - how
  to arrange various kinds of information on the
  computer screen and how to structure the possible
  sequences of interactions
• Simple interface - special purpose search window
  for string matching FIND
• More complex search tasks interface designers
  must decide how to lay out the various choices
  and information displays within the interface
  command or menu structure

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INTERFACE SUPPORT FOR SEARCH PROCESS

• Windowing system divide into different
  simultaneously displayed views
• Able to link documents, cut and paste,
• Arrange information within windows monolithic
  display, tiled windows or overlapping windows
• How many kinds of information can be shown at the
  same time text display area as well as others
  eg. thesaurus terms, query specifications, lists
  of saved titles, etc.
• Good layout, graphics, font size - IMPT

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22 Jan 2004

• Holiday
• Class will be cumulated with Week 12s class
• HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR