An evaluation framework of user interaction with metadata surrogates

This paper proposes a framework for the evaluation of user interaction with textual metadata surrogates in the search result interfaces of various types of Information Retrieval (IR) systems. Metadata surrogates are representations of the full-text documents displayed to the user as a list of retrieved results after a search has been performed in an IR system. By examining the metadata surrogates, users can make judgments about the relevance of the full-text document without having to access and evaluate the document itself, thus saving a considerable amount of time and effort. The literature review, however, reveals a lack of frameworks for the evaluation of users' interaction with metadata surrogates. The implications of such a framework would be to inform designers and researchers of IR systems about the main components of users' interaction with metadata surrogates and to facilitate the process of evaluating metadata surrogates in terms of content and presentation.