Toward a Design Space for Categorized Overviews of Search Results

There is a burgeoning movement to create user interfaces that combine searching and browsing in order to facilitate knowledge discovery. Categorized overviews are promising techniques to improve the browsing capabilities and subject access of search results. Research is needed to examine the design space in order to promote the usability and understanding of such interfaces. This paper proposes a set of 14 dimensions grouped into three areas of the design space for categorized overviews. These dimensions emerged from a review of recent literature about exploratory search interface design and categorized overviews, an analysis of five examples that are seeking to meet the needs of knowledge discovery, and personal experience. Finally, this paper discusses the application of the dimensions on a case study of a categorized overview created for a bibliographic database