Initial Evaluation of System for Visualizing Novices’ Unaware Search Intentions by Analyzing Behaviors of Article Selection

With the increasing diversity and complexity of the Web, skills for online exploration have become more and more important. People typically obtain such skills by gaining experience with classifying and organizing acquired Web pages, creating search queries. However, it is difficult for unskilled people to get the opportunity for meaningful experience. In this research, we aim to develop a mechanism for utilizing the intentions of inexperienced searchers to cultivate exploration skills in realistic way. To achieve this goal, we focused on the attention paid by a searcher to specific pages during the search process. After analyzing this behavior, we developed several methods for extracting clues that embody the searcher’s unaware intentions for use in further exploration. Then, with these methods as a basis, we designed a system for visualizing unaware intentions to promote the experience of exploration in novices. Experimental results using a prototype demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods.