Keyword query interface for the object search

Fig. 1. An ambiguous query. Two movie objects for the query "avatar".

The keyword interface is very convenient and indispensable for the object search. Without the keyword interface, the query must be formulated by the objects. If the query patterns are simple and the number of objects are relatively small, some menu-based or visual interface may be useful. If the number of objects are big and the query patterns are very various, however, the menu-based and the visual interface approach are getting more complex and less usable.

The downside of the keyword interface is the semantic ambiguity. User may represent the same meaning with too many different natural language expressions. Different spellings, different word orders, synonyms, etc. The usable keyword interface should handle all these language variations properly.

Definitely the semantic ambiguity is unavoidable. There are multiple movies with the same title and many peoples with the same name. Let's run the query "avatar", there exist two movies with the title. (Fig. 1)

Fig. 2. The semantic auto-completion

The easiest way to disambiguate the meaning of the query is for user by himself/herself to specify the intended meaning explicitly. In the semantic auto-completion (Fig. 2), if user choose the Avatar of James Cameron explicitly, the search result now gives more additional information about the movie object. (Fig. 3)

Fig. 3. The search result after selecting the Avatar of James Cameron in the auto-complection