Optimizing word search within documents by showing results in the context

Searching for text in a document is a day-to-day task supported by a variety of visual interface techniques. Since the target searching word may be scattered across the document, manually checking each word is exhaustive and time-consuming, which calls for effective visualization of the search results to enable efficient visual document analysis. In this paper, we revisit the problem of visualizing word search results and formulate two design goals: minimizing the number of user interactions and optimizing the onscreen information of search results. Two visualization techniques are introduced accordingly: a structured list that integrates search results with the hierarchical document structure and full sentence snippets to provide more complete local context for each matched result. We then conduct a user study to compare these techniques with some most commonly used visual interfaces. The results show that the structured list is preferred by most participants and leads to more efficient search, whereas the full sentence snippet results in a slight improvement in accuracy and efficiency, but is still appreciated by the participants.

Automated summary

This paper examines the problem of visualizing word search results in documents and proposes two design goals: minimizing user interactions and optimizing the onscreen information of search results. Two visualization techniques, a structured list and full sentence snippets, are introduced and compared with commonly used visual interfaces through a user study. The results show that the structured list is favored by users and leads to more efficient search.