An Aspectual Interface For Supporting Complex Search Tasks

With the increasing importance of search systems on the web, there is a continuing push to design interfaces which are a better match with the kinds of real-world tasks in which users are engaged. In this paper, we consider how broad, complex search tasks may be supported via the search interface. In particular, we consider search tasks which may be composed of multiple aspects, or multiple related subtasks. For example, in decision making tasks the user may investigate multiple possible solutions before settling on a single, final solution, while other tasks, such as report writing, may involve searching on multiple interrelated topics. A search interface is presented which is designed to support such broad search tasks, allowing a user to create search aspects, each of which models an independent subtask of some larger task. The interface is built on the intuition that users should be able to structure their searching environment when engaged on complex search tasks, where the act of structuring and organization may aid the user in understanding his or her task. A user study was carried out which compared our aspectual interface to a standard web-search interface. The results suggest that an aspectual interface can aid users when engaged in broad search tasks where the search aspects must be identified during searching; for a task where search aspects were pre-defined, no advantage over the baseline was found. Results for a decision making task were less clear cut, but show some evidence for improved task performance.