Semantic Search User Interface Patterns : An Introduction

Within the past few years, many patterns and principles have been proposed towards the enhancement of search user interfaces and experience. However, to access and explore information efficiently is still significantly challenging. Recently, we have seen the rise of a new kind of information retrieval approach, the so-called semantic search systems. These systems promise more accurate results while exploring semantics of the data. Although there exist several search user interfaces tailored to semantic search, there is still a lack of usability studies as well as good practices. In this work, we discuss the applicability of traditional search user interfaces in semantic search systems. Furthermore, we propose a new interaction model based on four patterns: Poli-Communicative, Discrete Display, Heterogeneous Data-face and Dive in-place.