Abstract :
Enormous Web search engine databases combined with
short search queries result in large result sets that are
often difficult to access. Result ranking works fairly well,
but users need help when it fails. For these situations,
we propose a filtering interface that is inspired by keyword-
in-context (KWIC) indices. The user interface lists
the most frequent keyword contexts (f KWIC). When a
context is selected, the corresponding results are displayed
in the result list, allowing users to concentrate on
the specific context. We compared the keyword context
index user interface to the rank order result listing in an
experiment with 36 participants. The results show that
the proposed user interface was 29% faster in finding
relevant results, and the precision of the selected results
was 19% higher. In addition, participants showed positive
attitudes toward the system.
