improving web search transparency by using a venn diagram interface
The user interfaces of the most popular search engines are largely the same. Typically, users are presented with an ordered list of documents, which provide limited help if users are having trouble finding the information they need. This article presents an interface called the Venn Diagram Interface (VDI) that offers users improved search transparency. The VDI allows users to see how each term, or group of terms, in a query contributes to the entire result set of a search. Furthermore, it allows users to browse the result sets generated by each of these terms. In a test with 10 participants, the VDI was compared against a standard web search interface, Google. With the VDI, users were able to find more documents of higher relevance and were more inclined to continue searching. Their level of interactivity was higher, the quality of the answers they found was perceived to be better. Eight out of 10 users preferred the VDI.
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