Search and explore
Jon M. Pearce, Shanton Chang, Gregor E. Kennedy, Robert B. W. Ely, Mary Ainley · 2012
Exploring information, as opposed to searching for it, is an activity not well supported in online environments. We present a novel, playful system that supports exploration and we describe an experiment in which we compare participants' use of the system with that of a similar system designed to support searching (a database). Our system lets the user manipulate quite imprecise terms and encourages a broad exploration of the information before selecting a result. The differences between the participant's use of these two systems is analysed and discussed. One outcome is that participants indicated a significantly greater satisfaction with the result they selected from the exploratory system than they did with the search system. Other examples of the use of such an exploratory system are also presented.