Tag-based information access in image collections: insights from log and eye-gaze analyses

Tag clouds have been utilized as a “social” way to find and visualize information, providing both one-click access and a snapshot of the “aboutness” of a tagged collection. While many research projects have explored and compared various tag artifacts using information theory and simulations, fewer studies have been conducted to compare the effectiveness of different tag-based browsing interfaces from the user’s point of view. This research aims to investigate how users utilize tags in image search context and to what extent different organizations of tag browsing interfaces are useful for image search. We conducted two experiments to explore user behavior and performance with three interfaces: two tag-enabled interfaces (the regular and faceted tag-clouds) and a baseline (search-only) interface. Our results demonstrate the value of tags in the image search context, the role of tags in the exploratory search, and the strengths of two kinds of tag organization explored in this paper.