DOCTORAL ABSTRACT

Study of Result Presentation and Interaction forAggregated Search
Shanu Sushmita
School of Computing Science,
University of Glasgow
G12 8QQ, Scotland.
shanusushmita@gmail.com

Abstract“Searching” on web has become an integral part of today’s world, and many people rely on it
when looking for information. The amount and the diversity of information available on the Web
have also increased dramatically. Due to which, search engine companies are making constant efforts in order to make this information accessible to the people effectively. Not only there is anincrease in the amount and diversity of information available online, users are now often seeking
information on broader topics. Users seeking information on broad topics, gather information fromvarious information sources (e.g., image, video, news, blog, etc). For such information requests, notonly web results but results from different document genre and multimedia contents are also becoming relevant. For instance, users’ looking for information on “Glasgow” might be interested in web
results about Glasgow, Map of Glasgow, Images of Glasgow, News of Glasgow, and so on.
Aggregated search aims to provide access to this diverse information in a unified manner byaggregating results from different information sources on a single result page; hence making information gathering process easier for broad topics. This thesis aimed to explore aggregated search fromthe users perspective.
The thesis first and foremost focused on understanding and describing the phenomena related tothe users’ search process in the context of aggregated search. The goal was to participate in building
theories and in understanding constraints, as well as providing insights into the interface design.
While the thematic (or topical) relevance of documents is important, this thesis argued that the“source type” (source-orientation) might also be an important dimension in the relevance spacefor investigating aggregated search. Therefore, relevance is multi-dimensional (topical and sourceorientated) within the context of aggregated search. Results from the study suggested that the effect of
the source-orientation was a significant factor in an aggregated search scenario, hence adding anotherdimension to the relevance space within the aggregated search scenario. The thesis further presented
a method, which combines rule base and machine learning techniques to identify source-orientation
behind a user query.
Furthermore, after analyzing log data from a search engine company and conducting user study
experiments, several design issues that may arise with respect to the aggregated search interface wereidentified. In order to address these issues, suitable design guidelines that can be beneficial from theinterface perspective were also suggested.

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Overall, the thesis aimed to explore the emerging aggregated search from users’ perspective,
since it is a very important for front-end technologies. An additional goal was to provide empiricalevidence regarding how aggregated search influence users searching behavior, and identified some of
the key challenges in aggregated search.
Available online at: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3289/

ACM SIGIR Forum87

Vol. 46 No. 1 June 2012