Free-Text Search versus Complex Web Forms

by Kien Tjin-Kam-Jet, Dolf Trieschnigg, and Djoerd Hiemstra

We investigated the use of free-text queries as an alternative means for searching “behind” web forms. We conducted a user study where we evaluated our prototype free-text interface in a travel planner scenario. Our results show that users prefer this free-text interface over the original web form and that they are about 9% faster on average at completing their search tasks.

The paper will be presented in April at the 33rd European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR 2011) in Dublin, Ireland

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