GRAFS: Graphical Faceted Search System to Support Conceptual Understanding in Exploratory Search

When people search for information about a new topic within large document collections, they implicitly construct mental model of the unfamiliar space to represent what currently know and guide their exploration into unknown. Building this can be challenging as it requires not only finding relevant documents but also synthesizing important concepts relationships that connect those both across documents. This article describes novel interactive approach designed help users an during exploratory search. We propose semantic system organize visualize relations set results. A user study ( n =20) was conducted compare proposed against baseline faceted on literature tasks. Experimental results show is more effective in helping recognize between key concepts, leading sophisticated understanding while maintaining similar functionality usability system.