What Do Exploratory Searchers Look at in a Faceted Search Interface?

Resource type
Authors/contributors
Title
What Do Exploratory Searchers Look at in a Faceted Search Interface?
Abstract
This study examined how searchers interacted with a web-based, faceted library catalog when conducting exploratory searches. It applied eye tracking, stimulated recall interviews, and direct observation to investigate important aspects of gaze behavior in a faceted search interface: what components of the interface searchers looked at, for how long, and in what order. It yielded empirical data that will be useful for both practitioners (e.g., for improving search interface designs), and researchers (e.g., to inform models of search behavior). Results of the study show that participants spent about 50 seconds per task looking at (fixating on) the results, about 25 seconds looking at the facets, and only about 6 seconds looking at the query itself. These findings suggest that facets played an important role in the exploratory search process.
Date
2009
Proceedings Title
Proceedings of the 9th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries
Place
New York, NY, USA
Publisher
ACM
Pages
313–322
Series
JCDL '09
Language
en
ISBN
978-1-60558-322-8
Accessed
8/7/18, 6:20 PM
Library Catalog
ACM Digital Library
Citation
Kules, B., Capra, R., Banta, M., & Sierra, T. (2009). What Do Exploratory Searchers Look at in a Faceted Search Interface? Proceedings of the 9th ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 313–322. https://doi.org/10.1145/1555400.1555452
Field of study
Contribution