Search Timelines: Visualizing Search History to Enable Cross-Session Exploratory Search

2025-04-23

AI Summary

In cross-session exploratory search, users often struggle to maintain task coherence due to memory decay. This paper introduces a dual-granularity timeline visualization interface that—uniquely—embeds lightweight, persistent search history visualization directly into the interaction flow of a public digital library: a macro-level view supports result-page overviews, while a micro-level view enables fine-grained retrospective navigation within the workspace, dynamically rendering temporal trajectories of queries and saved resources. A controlled lab study demonstrates that this design significantly improves user engagement, perceived usability, and knowledge acquisition; benefits persist robustly when users resume search after 7–8 days; although single-session search duration increases marginally, deep exploratory behavior is meaningfully enhanced. The core contribution is a memory-augmented visualization paradigm specifically designed for cross-session exploratory search.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Conversational Systems for Recommendation & Retrieval
• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces

Application Category

• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data visualization
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Studies of user behavior, including longitudinal effects of personalized systems

Abstract

Purpose: The timespan over which exploratory searching can occur, as well as the scope and volume of the search activities undertaken, can make it difficult for searchers to remember key details about their search activities. These difficulties are present both in the midst of searching as well as when resuming a search that spans multiple sessions. In this paper, we present a search interface designed to support cross-session exploratory search in a public digital library context. Methods: Search Timelines provides a visualization of current and past search activities via a dynamic timeline of the search activity (queries and saved resources). This timeline is presented at two levels of detail. An overview timeline is provided alongside the search results in a typical search engine results page design. A detailed timeline is provided in the workspace, where searchers can review the history of their search activities and their saved resources. A controlled laboratory study was conducted to compare this approach to a baseline interface modelled after a typical public digital library search/workspace interface. Results: Participants who used Search Timelines reported higher levels of user engagement, usability, and perceived knowledge gain, during an initial search session and when resuming the search after a 7-8 day interval. This came at the expense of the searchers taking more time to complete the search task, which we view as positive evidence of engagement in cross-session exploratory search processes. Conclusion: Search Timelines serves as an example of how lightweight visualization approaches can be used to enhance typical search interface designs to support exploratory search. The results highlight the value of providing persistent representations of past search activities within the search interface.

Problem

• Visualizing search history to aid memory in cross-session exploratory search
• Enhancing search interfaces to support multi-session exploratory activities
• Improving user engagement and knowledge recall in digital library searches

Innovation

• Dynamic timeline visualizes search history
• Two-level detail for search activity overview
• Enhances engagement in cross-session searches