A Search Engine for Preliminary Research

The interface pictured below is the third design. It is intended to assist researchers who are starting a project but only have a vague idea of what to search for. We started with a simple paper prototype and tested that with 5 users. We then moved to a Java-based prototype that we tested with 5 different users. The final working prototype below is a search engine that gives the user related categories on the right side (based on the search results) that can be subtracted from the search query by unchecking the box next to the term. The end result of the interaction is a search return set with unrelated material removed.