Patterns in information search for decision making: the effects of information abstraction

This paper reports on a study of abstraction in an information retrieval interface, where users had access to both detailed data and to two higher levels of abstraction of the data, in a multiple attribute alternative ranking situation. Through an experiment with a total of 76 subjects we found that, when they were not constrained by any built-in structure in their choice of information, there was a spectrum of use which combined various …