Exploring exploratory search: a user study with linked semantic data

The maturation of semantic technologies and the growing popularity of the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud make it possible to expose linked semantic data sets to end users in order to empower a range of analytical tasks taking advantage of knowledge integration and semantic linking. Linked semantic data appears to offer a great potential for exploratory search, which is open-ended, multi-faceted, and iterative in nature. However, there is limited insight into how browsing through linked semantic data sets can support exploratory search. This paper presents a user study with a uni-focal semantic browsing interface for exploratory search through several data sets linked via domain ontologies. The study, which is qualitative and exploratory in nature and uses music as an illustrative domain, examines (i) obstacles and challenges related to user exploratory search in LOD and (ii) the serendipitous learning effect and the role semantics plays in that. The approach and lessons learnt can benefit future human factor studies to evaluate interactive exploration of linked semantic data, as well as technology developers to become aware of issues that have to be addressed in to facilitate exploratory search with LOD.