The visualization of results is a critical component in search engines, and the standard ranked list interface has been a consistently predominant model. The emergence of social media provides a new opportunity to investigate visualization techniques that expose socially derived links between objects to support their exploration. Here we introduce and evaluate network-based visualizations for facilitating the exploration of a Web knowledge space. We developed a force directed network interface to visualize the result sets provided by GiveALink.org, a social bookmarking site. The classifications and tags by users are aggregated to build a social similarity network between bookmarked resources. We administered a user study to evaluate the potential of leveraging such social links in an exploratory search task. During exploration, the similarity links are used to arrange the resources in a semantic layout. Users in our study prefer a hybrid interface combining a conventional ranked list and a two dimensional network map, allowing them to find the same amount of relevant information using fewer queries. This behavior is a direct result of the additional structural information present in the network visualization, which aids them in the exploration of the information space.

1. Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather
Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer
ISI Foundation
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

2. Demo
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

3. 1 Background
Social Linking in Other Domains
Information Retrieval: Indexed vs. Exploratory
Search
2 Social Linking Motivation
3 Study Overview
4 Interface Evaluation User Study
5 Review of Findings: More Found Information or More
Efficiency?
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

4. ArtistNet Demo
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

5. Exploratory vs. Indexed Search
Gary Marchionini; Commun. ACM (2006): 41-46
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

6. Other Visual Network Search Interfaces/Research
Our work differs in a few important ways, we
Use an undirected, exploration-based user study focus,
rather than goal-oriented “hunt” for specific pieces of
information.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

7. Other Visual Network Search Interfaces/Research
Our work differs in a few important ways, we
Use an undirected, exploration-based user study focus,
rather than goal-oriented “hunt” for specific pieces of
information.
Use a less structured interactive result interface, allowing
for user orientation and arrangement of results and
navigation.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

8. Other Visual Network Search Interfaces/Research
Our work differs in a few important ways, we
Use an undirected, exploration-based user study focus,
rather than goal-oriented “hunt” for specific pieces of
information.
Use a less structured interactive result interface, allowing
for user orientation and arrangement of results and
navigation.
Leverage social link similarity data rather than content
similarity data.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

9. Similarity network in GiveALink
Markines et al. Hypertext 2008
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

10. Motivation
Can we help exploratory search of results by leveraging social
link data?
Support exploratory search interfaces in the Web.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

11. Motivation
Can we help exploratory search of results by leveraging social
link data?
Support exploratory search interfaces in the Web.
Form an evaluation framework for socially-driven
exploratory navigation.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

12. Determining and Measuring Interface Performance
What are we trying to prove/improve?
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

13. Determining and Measuring Interface Performance
What are we trying to prove/improve?
Measure annotations and queries as an indication of quality of
results and quantity of effort (resp.) between several different
(3 for our study) interface approaches.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

14. Determining and Measuring Interface Performance
What are we trying to prove/improve?
Measure annotations and queries as an indication of quality of
results and quantity of effort (resp.) between several different
(3 for our study) interface approaches.
Keep the features of all interfaces equal.
Remove “snippet text” describing each page from the
results.
Add “thumbnail hover previews” which act as visual
summaries of a webpage.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

15. User Study
Open web-based participant user study conducted with 64
individuals.
Users are randomly assigned one of three interfaces to
perform exploratory search
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

16. User Study
Open web-based participant user study conducted with 64
individuals.
Users are randomly assigned one of three interfaces to
perform exploratory search
They choose from the following open-ended topics:
American presidential elections electoral
colleges
Alternative energy sources
Artificial life
Impressionism
Partial differential equations
Communism socialism fascism democracy
Lung cancer
Cosmic background radiation
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

17. User Study
Open web-based participant user study conducted with 64
individuals.
Users are randomly assigned one of three interfaces to
perform exploratory search
They choose from the following open-ended topics:
American presidential elections electoral
colleges
Alternative energy sources
Artificial life
Impressionism
Partial differential equations
Communism socialism fascism democracy
Lung cancer
Cosmic background radiation
They query a topic, explore results, and annotate relevant
information
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

18. User Study
Open web-based participant user study conducted with 64
individuals.
Users are randomly assigned one of three interfaces to
perform exploratory search
They choose from the following open-ended topics:
American presidential elections electoral
colleges
Alternative energy sources
Artificial life
Impressionism
Partial differential equations
Communism socialism fascism democracy
Lung cancer
Cosmic background radiation
They query a topic, explore results, and annotate relevant
information
They answer supplementary exit questions
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

19. Map Interface
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

20. List Interface
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

21. Hybrid Interface
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

22. Annotation Frame (All Interfaces)
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

23. Annotations per Session
How did the different interfaces affect the number of
annotations?
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

24. Annotations per Session
How did the different interfaces affect the number of
annotations?
Users did not produce significantly more annotations on
average with any method (p > 0.7).
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

25. Queries per Session
Hybrid is better than list (p = 0.03), no other significant
differentiations (p > 0.15)
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

26. Interface Helped
Hybrid vs. List p = 0.02, no other significant differentiations
(p > 0.13). Results are for users who submitted more than one
query.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

27. Review of Findings
The results of our web-based participant study.
Participants needed fewer queries to find the same amount
of useful/interesting information (generate annotations).
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

28. Review of Findings
The results of our web-based participant study.
Participants needed fewer queries to find the same amount
of useful/interesting information (generate annotations).
Participants evaluated the hybrid interface better than the
list interface alone.
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer

29. Review of Findings
The results of our web-based participant study.
Participants needed fewer queries to find the same amount
of useful/interesting information (generate annotations).
Participants evaluated the hybrid interface better than the
list interface alone.
Questions?
Visualizing Social Links in Exploratory Search
Justin Donaldson, Michael Conover, Ben Markines, Heather Roinestad, and Filippo Menczer