Marti A. Hearst

Professor

University of California, Berkeley

Research on Search User Interfaces

A primary focus of my research is user interfaces for search. I have invented or participated in several well-known search interface projects including Scatter/Gather clustering of search results, TileBars query term visualization, BioText search over the bioscience literature, and the Flamenco project that investigated and the promoted the use of faceted metadata for collection navigation.

The Flamenco project has had a significant impact in industry and practice; interfaces similar in design to Flamenco are now the standard on e-commerce sites, image navigation sites, and library catalog sites, and support for faceted navigation is now standard in search tools (Solr, Elastic search) and content management systems.

In 2009 I published the first academic book on Search User Interfaces with Cambridge University Press, which has generously allowed me to make the book freely available on the web.

Search User Interface Projects

For publications, software, and talks about each project, visit the individual project pages.

  • WordSeer: Text Analysis Environment for Humanities Scholars
  • FLAMENCO: Applying Faceted Metadata to Search Interfaces
  • BioText: Bioscience Literature Analysis and Search
  • TileBars: Visualization of Context and Structure in Search Results
  • Cha-Cha Search: Exposing Intranet Structure in Web Search Results
  • Scatter/Gather: Clustering Interface for Search Results