Experimental Search User Interfaces

Abstract

So far, this book has mostly covered mostly established, deployed, or well-researched SUIs and SUI features, while including examples of some recent advances. There are still, however, many experimental SUIs being created, and novel research areas being studied, such as collaborative searching and use of social media. Google’s retired ‘Wonder Wheel,’ shown in Figure 5.1, is an example of an

experimental SUI that was deployed but has neither seen widespread use nor published evaluation. The Wonder Wheel presented related queries visually in a circle around the current search terms. Searchers could then click on any of these related queries to change the search. A circle was drawn around the newly chosen query, and the old query-circle was faded slightly.New related queries were placed around the revised search. Searchers could repeat this process, and each selection provided a new set of search results to the right. Essentially, the wonder wheel provided a new visualisation of and an alternative step-wise interaction for interactive query suggestions.