Relevance in technicolor

In this article we propose the concept of relevance criteria profiles, which provide a global view of user behaviour in judging the relevance of retrieved information. We further propose a plotting technique which provides a session based overview of the relevance judgement processes interlaced with interactions that allow the researcher to visualise and quickly detect emerging patterns in both interactions and relevance criteria usage. We discuss by example, using data from a user study conducted between the months of January and August of 2008, how these tools support the better understanding of task based user valuation of documents that is likely to lead to recommendations for improving end-user services in digital libraries.