Task embedded visualisation: the design for an interactive IR results display for journalists

There is need for user-centred visualisation research to engage with the activity context, information needs, knowledge and abilities of target user-groups. With a focus on the work of journalists, we first argue for information-retrieval results visualisation as a suitable browsing framework for journalists´ frequently ill-defined needs and high-recall searches. We then describe the design and rationale for a histogram-based visualisation for journalists. We also describe the integration of this idea within a system that structures searching as a two-step query-and-filter operation. This approach is intended to support initial exploratory browsing and refinement in a way that is sympathetic to the systematic focusing that naturally occurs during complex, unstructured task performance. Further, the use of an enduring ´base´ results set is intended to encourage structural familiarity with the broader results and therefore to enhance navigation.