Sentiment Visualisation Widgets for Exploratory Search

This paper proposes the usage of \emph{visualisation widgets} for exploratory search with \emph{sentiment} as a facet. Starting from specific design goals for depiction of ambivalence in sentiment, two visualization widgets were implemented: \emph{scatter plot} and \emph{parallel coordinates}. Those widgets were evaluated against a text baseline in a small-scale usability study with exploratory tasks using Wikipedia as dataset. The study results indicate that users spend more time browsing with scatter plots in a positive way. A post-hoc analysis of individual differences in behavior revealed that when considering two types of users, \emph{explorers} and \emph{achievers}, engagement with scatter plots is positive and significantly greater \textit{when users are explorers}. We discuss the implications of these findings for sentiment-based exploratory search and personalised user interfaces.