Evaluating User Feedback Systems
Kevin J. Menard · 2006
The increasing reliance of people on computers for daily tasks has resulted in a vast number of digital documents. Search engines were once luxury tools for quickly scanning a set of documents but are now quickly becoming the only practical way to navigate through this sea of information. Traditionally, search engine results are based upon a mathematical formula of document relevance to a search phrase. Often, however, what a user deems to be relevant and what a search engine computes as relevant are not the same. User feedback regarding the utility of a search result can be collected in order to refine query results. Additionally, user feedback can be used to identify queries that lack high quality search results. A content author can then further develop existing content or create new content to improve those search results. The most straightforward way of collecting user feedback is to add a graphical user interface component to the search interface that asks the user how much he or she liked the search result. However, if the feedback mechanism requires the user to provide feedback before he or she can progress further with his or her search, the user