Using Social Tags and Controlled Vocabularies As Filters for Searching and Browsing: A Health Science Experiment

HCIR 2011 – Google, Mountain View CA

Michael Zarro Xia Lin

mzarro@drexel.edu linx@drexel.edu

How can an interactive interface support the 3rd most popular online activity?

80% of adult Internet users look for health information online

Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/2011/healthtopics

Background

Challenge

Myocardial Infarction

Heart Attack

Consumers are limited by the vocabulary gap [1] between expert content-creator and lay-user, and often know neither the information landscape nor have useful “navigational signposts” [2].

[1] Zeng, Q. and Tse, T. 2006. Exploring and developing consumer health vocabularies. JAMIA. 13, 1. 24-29.

[2] Kammerer, Y. et al. 2009. Signpost from the masses: learning effects in an exploratory social tag search browser. Proceedings of the 27th international conference on Human factors in computing systems (New York, NY, USA, 2009), 625–634.

Questions

• How does an interface enhanced with MeSH and social tags support user health information seeking tasks? Do users prefer to use social media (Delicious) tags or MeSH terms as filters while searching?

• Do users prefer resources retrieved provided by the NLM or Yahoo! when answering health questions?

Experiment

Experiment

• 20 participants

– 10 lay-users, students with no medical education

– 10 health/medical students, 2+ terms

• Answer 3 search scenariosScenario 2: risks and benefits of gastric bypass surgeryQuery Apply filter Apply filter Answer

• Think aloud data collected

• Post-test questionnaire and exit interview

Prototype System Backend

Query

Social media tagsControlled vocabulary terms

Medical Authority Search ResultsPublic Search Results

Prototype User Interface

Note: Interface left intentionally blank to increase user focus on terms.

Results

Results: Helpful and Satisfying

• 19/20 found the interface satisfying or extremely satisfying• 15/20 reported the system helpful

“I liked the system a lot.. and I like the filters a lot!”

“I would click on laparoscopy just because even though I’m not sure what that is, I saw that word here and I think it might be like a term, the actual name of the procedure”

“I actually like what they're trying to do, to get similar searches, like if you haven't thought of something”

“It gives you an idea of what it is that you need to look out for”

Page Views - Answers

Results Viewed Answer Sources

109

67

78

33

28

30

1

Terms Clicked

Medically trained usersLay-users

0Delicious (social media) tags selected

Controlled vocabulary to support health IR

Controlled Vocabulary

Participants in this study preferred controlled vocabulary terms (MeSH) over social tags (Delicious), suggesting that there is some “basic level” of metadata understood by lay-users. - Medical librarians should investigate which terms in their metadata best guide consumers, and visualizations for public health search.

Future Interface…

Michael ZarroIMLS Fellow, Drexel University mzarro@gmail.com

Xia LinProfessor, Drexel University linx@drexel.edu