User Interaction with Linked Data: An Exploratory Search Approach

It is becoming increasingly popular to expose government and citywide sensor data as linked data. Linked data appears to offer a great potential for exploratory search in supporting smart city goals of helping users to learn and make sense of complex and heterogeneous data. However, there are no systematic user studies to provide an insight of how browsing through linked data can support exploratory search. This paper presents a user study that draws on methodological and empirical underpinning from relevant exploratory search studies. The authors have developed a linked data browser that provides an interface for user browsing through several datasets linked via domain ontologies. In a systematic study that is qualitative and exploratory in nature, they have been able to get an insight on central issues related to exploratory search and browsing through linked data. The study identifies obstacles and challenges related to exploratory search using linked data and draws heuristics for future improvements. The authors also report main problems experienced by users while conducting exploratory search tasks, based on which requirements for algorithmic support to address the observed issues are elicited. The approach and lessons learnt can facilitate future work in browsing of linked data, and points at further issues that have to be addressed.