Evaluating Search User Interfaces

Abstract

A lot can be said about evaluation, both in terms of general HCI evaluation techniques [27], and system-focused IR evaluation techniques [70]. Being only a small part of a book, this section can neither do proper justice to IR evaluation nor HCI evaluation. Consequently, while other related works focus on describing the full range of evaluation methods (e.g., HCI [27] and Interactive IR [70]), this section aims to provide an approach for thinking about SUI evaluation, and what is being evaluated. The aim of this chapter is to help the reader be mindful of approaches and the reasoning for choosing different methods. Readers should then turn to detailed literature specifically about evaluation to better plan their studies. Several approaches, however, are discussed below within the context of the frameworks set out in the introduction of this book.