Using temporal patterns of interactions to design effective automated searching assistance

The understanding of temporal patterns of interaction between searchers and system assistance can greatly help in the designing of effective automated searching assistance. Searcher typically seek out assistance after interactions with the results listings, submitting the initial query, and browser navigation. It was found that searchers on the system with pattern based searching assistance performed better than searchers on the system with assistance provided at every point in the search process. User most commonly implement assistance to manage results, overwhelmingly acting to restrict the query, which signifies that precision is a key issue for exploratory searching. Searching assistance synchronized with the user's searching process can reduce the cognitive effort required for task switching and can increase the implementation of system assistance.