Evaluating Multilayer Multimedia Exploration

Multimedia exploration is an entertaining approach for multimedia retrieval enabling users to interactively browse and navigate through multimedia collections in a content-based way. The multimedia exploration approach extends the traditional query-by-example retrieval scenario to be a more intuitive approach for obtaining a global overview over an explored collection. However, novel exploration scenarios require many user studies demonstrating their benefits. In this paper, we present results of an extensive user study focusing on the comparison of 3-layer Multilayer Exploration Structure MLES structure with standard flat k-NN browsing. The results of the user study show that principles of the MLES lead to better effectiveness of the exploration process, especially when searching for a first object of the searched concept in an unknown collection.