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Search

People don’t remember what was said: People remember how they felt

“This mantra has been one of my favourites for a good 7 years now. Working with a range of companies, charities and individuals, and having been in many board rooms, held live events, and developed digital strategy, I can certainly say it’s true. I’m not trying to brag here, but point out through experience I’ve learned that Experience itself is a big a deal. The other people who know how big a deal experience is are restaurant owners. They know that it’s not only the food they serve that people are paying for – it’s everything else that goes with it – and the things that go before and after it.” (Search Engine People Blog)

Search and Browse

“Historically I had been taught and understood search and browse as distinct elements – which they are visually and from a UI elements standpoint – but from a behavioral perspective, they really are not, rather, they are part of a continuum. A spectrum of discovery behaviors if you will.” (Livia Labate)

Introduction to Information Retrieval

“Information retrieval did not begin with the Web. In response to various challenges of providing information access, the field of information retrieval evolved to give principled approaches to searching various forms of content. The field began with scientific publications and library records, but soon spread to other forms of content, particularly those of information professionals, such as journalists, lawyers, and doctors. Much of the scientific research on information retrieval has occurred in these contexts, and much of the continued practice of information retrieval deals with providing access to unstructured information in various corporate and governmental domains, and this work forms much of the foundation of our book.” (Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Hinrich Schütze 2008)

An Evolution of Search

“The technology of information retrieval systems continues to evolve, and in particular, the technology of search has continued to evolve. A new stage in the evolution of search has arrived with the advent of entity-based searching. This paper provides a brief review of some of the earlier stages of search evolution in the context of the evolutionary pressures of the concurrent improvement of both precision and recall.” (John D. Holt and David J. Miller – ASIS&T Bulletin October/November 2009)

Beyond Goals: Site Search Analytics from the Bottom Up

“(…) be wary of the standard reports that come with your analytics application. They certainly have value, but these reports also provide a false sense of security—as if they were designed with your needs in mind. Nothing could be farther from the truth: Top-down, goal-driven analytics should be centered on your KPI, and your organization’s goals aren’t the same as everyone else’s.” (Louis Rosenfeld – A List Apart 292)

Book: Search User Interfaces

“Search is an integral part of peoples’ online lives; people turn to search engines for help with a wide range of needs and desires, from satisfying idle curiousity to finding life-saving health remedies, from learning about medieval art history to finding video game solutions and pop music lyrics. Web search engines are now the second most frequently used online computer application, after email. Not long ago, most software applications did not contain a search module. Today, search is fully integrated into operating systems and is viewed as an essential part of most information systems.” (Marti A. Hearst)

The Mystery of Filtering by Sorting

“(…) for most users of consumer-facing ecommerce applications, the difference between a sort and a filter presents a mystery they understand dimly, if at all. The distinction between sorting and filtering blurs, because of a phenomenon I’ve called filtering by sorting, which leads to all sorts of interesting search user interface implications.” (Greg NudelmanUXmatters)

Blind Search

“(…) the search engine taste test. Type in a search query above, hit search then vote for the column which you believe best matches your query. The columns are randomised with every query. The goal of this site is simple, we want to see what happens when you remove the branding from search engines. How differently will you perceive the results? – I work for Microsoft. This site is not affiliated with my employer, it is not a Microsoft initiative, it’s simply me having fun in my spare time.” (Michael Kordahi) – courtesy of rnagtegaal

Designing for Faceted Search

“Faceted search lets users refine or navigate a collection of information by using a number of discrete attributes – the so-called facets. A facet represents a specific perspective on content that is typically clearly bounded and mutually exclusive. The values within a facet can be a flat list that allows only one choice (e.g. a list of possible shoe sizes) or a hierarchical list that allow you to drill-down through multiple levels (e.g. product types, Computers > Laptops). The combination of all facets and values are often called a faceted taxonomy. These faceted values can be added directly to content as metadata or extracted automatically using text mining software.” – (Stephanie Lemieux – User Interface Engineering)

People don’t want to search

“The premise is that people don’t want to search. Instead, people want to get their tasks done and get straight to their answers. So how to we do this? We move from a web of pages to a web of objects. People, places, businesses, restaurants are all objects that have attributes such as noisy or expensive (in the case of restaurants.) Intents of searchers are satisfied by presenting objects and attributes. It’s not exactly the semantic web but about finding implicit relations through web usage.” – (Ricardo Baeza-YatesThe Next Web)

Choosing the Right Search Results Page Layout: Make the Most of Your Width

“Page layout forms the foundation in presenting search results. Your layout decisions for search results pages will have tremendous impact on the user experience for your entire site. Choosing the right width for search results is important, and the optimal width for search results may be a great deal narrower than some people using big monitors would believe.” – (Greg NudelmanUXmatters)

Marissa Mayer Gives Us An Insight Into How Google Works

“Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products & User Experience at Google recently delivered a fascinating Keynote at the Google I/O Developers Conference. She shares a heap of interesting nuggets, from the reason why they chose 10 search results as default, and why they chose a yellow background behind their ads as opposed to the industry favored blue.” – (TheNextWeb)

The Information Search Process Revisited: Is the model still useful?

“Kuhlthau’s model of the Information Search Process was developed in the 1980s and refined in the 1990s. Since its conceptualization and development, the model has been used as a framework and diagnostic tool for understanding the information search experience of people in a variety of library and information settings. These information environments and services have not remained static, particularly with rapid advances in and impacts of information technology. Therefore, questions arise regarding the current usefulness of the model in light of the developments in the information environment to date. This paper seeks to explore whether the model still is a useful, insightful explanation of information seeking behaviour. This question is examined through a literature review of recent work applying the model and presents findings from a research study that explored the model within a school context.” (Carol C. Kuhlthau et al. – ISIC08 via Information Research 13.4)