Sentiment Visualisation Widgets for Exploratory Search

TL;DR

This paper introduces visualization widgets, specifically scatter plots and parallel coordinates, to enhance sentiment-based exploratory search, demonstrating that scatter plots increase user engagement especially among explorers.

Contribution

The paper presents two novel visualization widgets for sentiment exploration and evaluates their effectiveness compared to text baselines in a usability study.

Findings

Scatter plots increase browsing time positively.

Explorers engage more with scatter plots than achievers.

Visualization widgets improve sentiment exploration experience.

Abstract

This paper proposes the usage of \emph{visualisation widgets} for exploratory search with \emph{sentiment} as a facet. Starting from specific design goals for depiction of ambivalence in sentiment, two visualization widgets were implemented: \emph{scatter plot} and \emph{parallel coordinates}. Those widgets were evaluated against a text baseline in a small-scale usability study with exploratory tasks using Wikipedia as dataset. The study results indicate that users spend more time browsing with scatter plots in a positive way. A post-hoc analysis of individual differences in behavior revealed that when considering two types of users, \emph{explorers} and \emph{achievers}, engagement with scatter plots is positive and significantly greater \textit{when users are explorers}. We discuss the implications of these findings for sentiment-based exploratory search and personalised user interfaces.