Does interactive search results overview help?: an eye tracking study

Abstract

We examined the effect of introducing search results overview in the form of a tag cloud displayed next to a textual search result list. Does such an overview make users faster in search task execution and lower the cognitive effort required to make progress? We use cognitive effort measures derived from eye tracking data to examine the effect of providing a tag cloud-like summary on a user's information search and navigation behaviors. The results show that a results overview helps a user become faster and more efficient. One contribution of this work is to describe the use of eye tracking data to create a simple model of reading and measures of cognitive effort. Another is to use those measures to explain the differences in interaction with two information search interfaces