Visualizations in Exploratory Search: A User Study with Stock Market Information
This addresses the challenge of exploratory search for users in domains like stock market information, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing visualization and interaction techniques.
The paper tackled the problem of integrating interactive visualizations into exploratory search to help users access and combine large amounts of information, and the result was a user study showing that participants could complete complex tasks like identifying related items and linking heterogeneous information without instructions, enabling quick knowledge acquisition in unfamiliar domains.
In this paper we present an approach that integrates interactive visualizations in the exploratory search process. In this model visualizations can act as hubs where large amounts of information are made accessible in easy user interfaces. Through interaction techniques this information can be combined with related information on the World Wide Web. We applied the new search concept to the domain of stock market information and conducted a user study. Participants could use this interface without instructions, could complete complex tasks like identifying related information items, link heterogeneous information types and use different interaction techniques to access related information more easily. In this way, users could quickly acquire knowledge in an unfamiliar domain.