The research domains information retrieval and information visualization have always been independent from each other. However, they have the potential to be mutually beneficial. With this in mind, a writer school was organized in Zinal, Switzerland, in January 2012, within the context of the EU-funded research project PROMISE (Participative Research Laboratory for Multimedia and Multilingual Information Systems Evaluation). PROMISE aims at advancing the experimental evaluation of complex multimedia and multilingual information systems in order to support individuals, commercial entities, and communities who design, develop, employ, and improve such complex systems. The overall goal of PROMISE is to deliver a unified environment collecting data, knowledge, tools, and methodologies, and to help the user community involved in experimental evaluation. This book constitutes the outcome of the PROMISE Winter School 2012 and contains 11 invited lectures from the research domains information retrieval and information visualization. A large variety of subjects are covered, including hot topics such as crowdsourcing and social media.
