Mining Novice User Activity with TRECVID Interactive Retrieval Tasks

This paper investigates the applicability of Informedia shot-based interface features for video retrieval in the hands of novice users, noted in past work as being too reliant on text search. The Informedia interface was redesigned to better promote the availability of additional video access mechanisms, and tested with TRECVID 2005 interactive search tasks. A transaction log analysis from 24 novice users shows a dramatic increase in the use of color search and shot-browsing mechanisms beyond traditional text search. In addition, a within-subjects study examined the employment of user activity mining to suppress shots previously seen. This strategy did not have the expected positive effect on performance. User activity mining and shot suppression did produce a broader shot space to be explored and resulted in more unique answer shots being discovered. Implications for shot suppression in video retrieval information exploration interfaces are discussed.