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This workshop contribution presents experiences from our work on supporting exploratory search tasks by using visualization to augment the search process and information sensemaking in a specific domain of cross-community knowledge exchange. We then discuss how the lessons learned here are related and can be transferred to supporting exploratory access to user-generated media collections. The first part presents three main results of our recent work: 1) a concrete visual information interface for explorative, multi-perspective access to community information spaces, 2) an evaluation framework for measuring search performance in terms of user-centered knowledge construction effects and 3) the results of an empirical laboratory study applying this framework to compare the use of a visual information interface (Knowledge Explorer) and a traditional search system (Google). The second part discusses how these experiences are linked to the currently exploding phenomenon of personal and participatory media where huge amounts of information are increasingly produced and shared between users, in a number of different media (audio, photo, video) with no professional mediators and little or no structuring. We argue that user-generated content creation and sharing exhibits structural properties typical for explorative rather than goal-directed search needs. This requires new kinds of search tools integrating collaborative techniques such as community-based content aggregation and filtering with visual exploration interfaces.

Challenges and Opportunities for Visual Exploratory Search ...

Challenges and Opportunities for Visual Exploratory Search in User-generated Media Content Collections

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