Creating sparks: comparing search results using discriminatory search term word co-occurrence to facilitate serendipity in the enterprise.

Cleverley, Paul Hugh; Burnett, Simon

Abstract

Categories or tags that appear in faceted search interfaces which are representative of an information item, rarely convey unexpected or non-obvious associated concepts buried within search results. No prior research has been identified which assesses the usefulness of discriminative search term word co-occurrence to generate facets to act as catalysts to facilitate insightful and serendipitous encounters during exploratory search. In this study, 53 scientists from two organisations interacted with semi-interactive stimuli, 74% expressing a large/moderate desire to use such techniques within their workplace. Preferences were shown for certain algorithms and colour coding. Insightful and serendipitous encounters were identified. These techniques appear to offer a significant improvement over existing approaches used within the study organisations, providing further evidence that insightful and serendipitous encounters can be facilitated in the search user interface. This research has implications for organisational learning, knowledge discovery and exploratory search interface design.

Citation

CLEVERLEY, P.H. and BURNETT, S. 2015. Creating sparks: comparing search results using discriminatory search term word co-occurrence to facilitate serendipity in the enterprise. Journal of information and knowledge management [online], 14(1), article 1550007. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219649215500070

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 17, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Apr 17, 2015
• Publication Date: Mar 31, 2015
• Deposit Date: Dec 23, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 1, 2016
• Journal: Journal of information and knowledge management
• Print ISSN: 0219-6492
• Electronic ISSN: 1793-6926
• Publisher: World Scientific Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 14
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: 1550007
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1142/S0219649215500070
• Keywords: Enterprise search; Digital library; Exploratory search; Serendipity; Text analytics; Information discovery
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/1378
• Contract Date: Dec 23, 2015