- Standard Information Retrieval Evaluation
- Informal Usability Testing
- Formal Studies and Controlled Experiments
- Longitudinal Studies
- Analyzing Search Engine Server Logs
- Large-Scale Log-Based Usability Testing (Bucket Testing)
- Special Concerns with Evaluating Search Interfaces

Methods for Evaluating Search User Interfaces

- Avoid experimenter bias
- Encourage participant motivation
- Account for participants individual differences
- Account for differences in tasks and queries
- Control test collection characteristics
- Account for differences in timing response variable
- Compare against a strong baseline

Special Concerns When Evaluating Search Interfaces

Search interfaces are evaluated based on usability:
- Effectiveness
- Efficiency
- Satisfaction

San Jose State University

Indiana University

A search interface is a type of graphical user interface that helps a user retrieve information.

Search Interfaces

- Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
- Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
- Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
- Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
- Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Components of Usability

Hearst, M. A. (2009). Search user interfaces. Cambridge University Press. [https://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/]

Search User Interfaces

- Offer informative feedback
- Support user control
- Reduce short-term memory load
- Provide shortcuts for skilled users
- Reduce errors; offer simple error handling
- Strive for consistency
- Permit easy reversal of actions
- Design for closure

Design Guidelines for User Interfaces

Evaluation of Search Interfaces

To design successful interfaces, it is necessary to understand the information-seeking process and strategies that people engage in when they are searching for information. Here are a few of the major theoretical models of information seeking:
- The Standard Model of Information Seeking
- The Cognitive Model of Information Seeking
- The Dynamic (Berry-Picking) Model
- Information seeking in stages
- Information seeking as a strategic process
- Sensemaking

Models of the Information Seeking Process

Personalization in search means that search results should take into account the reality that people's demands, goals, and tastes differ.

Personalization in Search

Using categories to sort, filter, and group search results, table-of-contents views, faceted navigation and search, and clustering are all covered in Integrating Navigation with Search, which concludes with the benefits of categories vs. clusters in search and browsing interfaces.

Integrating Navigation with Search

It is important to understand user's search needs and queries to support their complex information-seeking tasks.

Supporting the Search Process

Presentation of search results is an important part of search interfaces. Empirical research has provided support for several common ways of presenting search results.

Presentation of Search Results

Since the human perceptual system is highly attuned to image, incorporating visual information into the display using techniques from the field of information visualization would be helpful to the search process, which makes the communication more rapidly and effectively.

Information Visualization for Search Interface

Users often go through a cycle of query reformulation, which means they start with an initial query, make changes to the query if they do not find the desired information, and repeat this cycle until users are satisfied. 

Query Reformulation

One major usability design flaw is when users cannot find content when making searches for basic material or when it isn’t easily accessible to mission-critical pages, this is a result of the site having low findability and discoverability. 

- Findability: Users are able to efficiently locate content or functionality in an application or website that they presume exists.


- Discoverability: Users come across unfamiliar content or functionality without knowing beforehand. 

Findability vs Discoverability

A Mental model is what the user understands about the user system. It is one of the more significant concepts in human-computer interaction (HCI).

Learn Before

Related

Learn After