Workshop: 2. Innovation and Evaluation in Information Exploration Interfaces

Gene Golovchinsky, FX Palo Alto Laboratory; Nick Belkin, Rutgers University

Traditional Information Retrieval (IR) is concerned with improving effectiveness of indexing and retrieval mechanisms, and with supporting one information seeking behavior: specified searching through query formulation. This supports one kind of user population, with one kind of information need. The networked information environment has resulted in a shift in the user population of IR systems. This has introduced new classes of users, in the sense of levels of expertise, and has also made clear that there are different kinds of information needs and different kinds of information seeking behaviors than those supported by traditional IR systems and techniques. This workshop focuses on developing an understanding of one such information seeking behavior, Information Exploration, on interface design for supporting this behavior and on evaluation methods for assessing such interfaces. Information Exploration addresses the goal of refining a vague concept into a more thorough understanding of the problem that led to the information interaction.

Problems to be addressed include:

• Identification of the different tasks associated with Information Exploration
• The principled design of interfaces to support such tasks
• The evaluation of such interfaces

Twenty participants will be selected on the basis of a one-page abstract of a position paper on one of the three themes of the workshop. These abstracts must include a specification of the Information Exploration task which is being addressed and an explicit statement of the relationship of the proposal/position to that task.

More information is available at http://anarch.ie.utoronto.ca/people/golovch/CHI98workshop/.

Contact
Gene Golovchinsky
FX PAL, Inc.
3400 Hillview Ave., Bldg 4
Palo Alto, CA 94304 USA
Tel: +1 650 813 7361
Email: gene@pal.xerox.com