What People Look at in a Web Search

Ying-Hsang Liu, Lecturer. Charles Sturt University, will speak on "Individual differences, user perceptions and eye gaze in biomedical search interfaces" at the CSIRO ICT Seminar Room, Computer Science and IT Building, Australian National University, Canberra, 4pm, 17 August 2015.

"User search behaviour studies suggest that individual differences, such as domain knowledge, search experience and cognitive styles, are important factors affecting people’s interactions with search systems. However, very few studies have investigated the effect of individual differences on eye gaze for the design of natural search user interface. In this seminar, I will present findings from an eye-tracking study of the biomedical domain experts’ interactions with novel search interfaces. Thirty-two participants searched eight complex questions on four different search interfaces, which are distinguished by whether the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms are presented and how the displayed MeSH terms are generated. Our findings reveal that domain knowledge and search experience significantly affect the users’ areas of interest (AOI) of different interface elements. There is a significant interaction effect between search interfaces and cognitive styles. The implications for search user interface design will be discussed."