Max L. Wilson

Moved

2009-10-17T10:40:00.002+01:00

try here

In Collaborative Search, is Perception Everything?

2009-09-16T10:03:00.003+01:00

After reading a fascinating series of tweets on what constitues success in collaborative information seeking, between Jeremy Pickens, Sharoda Paul, Brynn Evans, and Gene Golovchinsky this morning (I woke up some hours after the dicussion), it struck me how important the difference between actual and perceived information need is in collaborative searching activities.

In scenarios where a group of friends are working together to organise a holiday, for example, then every member in the group is working on a perceived collective need. If several people are helping one person solve their problem, then the central person is (hopefully) working on an actual information need, but all their helpers are working on a perceived version of that persons need.

Sharoda Paul has been studying collaborative searching behaviour in medical environments. I haven't asked her directly about it, but in the worst case everyone is working to solve a patients need. All the medical staff are working on perceived information needs, with many, I would suspect, working on perceived versions of other peoples perceived information needs. A nurse might be working to what she thinks the doctor needs to solve the problem they think the patient has.

So what do we know about the difference between actual and perceived information needs? I picked it up in Jarvelin and Ingwersen's 2004 paper that preceded their big book 'The Turn'. The turn talks about it more, but concludes that its relatively underexplored. It appears to be a commonly used term in medical papers about how patients view their illnesses. Related topics, however, have been popular, such as Sensemaking and the elements of communication in collaborative search. Sharoda presented some fascinating work at CHI2009 after her time working at MSR on sensemaking of previous collaborative searchers. Nikhil Sharma has also presented some fascinating work on sensemaking of handovers, between shifts in hospitals for example.

I'm sure the topic has been broached in papers, and is being addressed in part by these related topics, but it seems like collaborative information seeking provides a great opportunity to study perceived and actual information needs, and provide insights back to collaborative search efforts. I'm looking forward to more collaborative search and sensemaking workshops to come! any at CHI2010?

Google does, apparently, test everything

2009-04-07T04:32:00.002+01:00

I was recently interested by a debate about why Google sticks its facets, and now its query refinements etc, at the bottom of the search results. The basic assumption that was proposed was that you only need to refine your results if you didnt get it in the first 10 results, which you probably did anyway right.

I thoroughly enjoyed a good chat with Daniel Russell today, about this decision. I can reveal that it is a very very very well tested decision. Not just a random design decision, as I perhaps naively assumed. Apparently, they even tested 5px variations of it on the x and y axis, as well as placing it above and below the first result of 10 and many more options combined. And their high volume studies decided right there, not 5px to the side, was best.

Apparently it doesnt stop there. Even the height, and shade of blue, of the horizontal bar above the results has a dramatic effect. The colour blue has been carefully chosen.

In some respects, I feel like my research ideas and focus have just been completely shattered into tiny shards. But I guess I am now all the better for knowing (or believe I know) how purposefully Google is how it is. And its just like Daniel Russell said in the recent IEEE special issue, there are some things that you can only study at their level, including tiny UI changes.

Not that they only test small changes it seems.

What is the smallest sensemaking problem?

2009-04-04T14:46:00.002+01:00

Daniel Russell opens the CHI2009 Sensemaking Workshop with a question:

What is the smallest sensemaking problem? What is the very minimum that counts as sensemaking?

A lot of the challenges in this area are group planning problems, handoffs in hospitals, writing essays. These range from big to massive. Whats a small sensemaking problem?

CHI2009 Planning tool

2009-04-02T10:26:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I released a planning tool for attending CHI2009. Its had 50 people actually use it in the first 24 hours, and I suspect many more visitors (I should be counting really).

Ive had plenty of feedback already, some improvements to make, but much praise too:

"Excellent Max! - Thanks a lot!"

"This is super! ... just having such a planner is a relief! I commend you for such a straight-forward solution."

"This looks great, can't wait to get home and put it on my PowerBook and iPod! Thanks so much for doing this!"

and many many more. I'm quite surprised by the response I've had. Its, of course, quite generic and easy to apply to another conference. So do contact me if you like. Otherwise enjoy and I'll see some of you at CHI!

Google tests more text with each snippet

2009-03-26T21:28:00.004Z

Daniel Tunkelang has brought my attention to another blog entry about some of the tests that Google is carrying out at the moment. As well as letting you view timelines, and a 'wonder wheel' of connections, the options it lets you test include adding thumbnails to each search result (something that Ask.com has been doing for a while) and also allowing you to see more than 2 lines of text per result.

This last point is the one that seems rather interesting to me. I've heard many a search engine representative talk about getting as many results as possible above the fold (the point where you'd have to scroll to keep reading), and getting the best trade off, therefore, between context and space. Tim Paek et al, at Microsoft Research, studied the idea of flexible snippet lengths back at CHI2004. Its been a long time coming. I proposed back at a SIGIR workshop in 2007 that we just let people choose the size of the each snippet in the preferences, and see how often people change it - and to what? Maybe now we'll see.

Interestingly, in IEEE Computer in March 2009, Daniel Russell, of Google, wrote an article saying that, for some research, only big corporations with thousands of processors and millions of users can really test small UI changes, among many other things. Well I'm glad that Google is testing this - and I hope we see some results from it too.

google.com been giving term suggestions?

2009-03-06T10:18:00.002Z

How long has google.com been providing this term suggestion on its interface? with the number of results its going to provide? They don't do it on google.co.uk. Fun fun.

What seperates query refinement, clustering, and faceted search?

2009-03-05T20:15:00.002Z

I've been thinking recently about what seperates out the different interactive information retrieval techniques, as a term I am using loosely for now. There's interactive query refinement or expansion, which is often used to suggests potential changes to a query to explore sub-groups of the results. There's clustering, which analyses the results for clusters, in order to help users explore sub-groups of the results. And there's faceted search, which provides many different types of categorisation over the results in order to help users explore sub-groups of the results.

Each of these can be used to explore groups in the results, and they mainly differ by the back-end system that is used to label the sub-groups. They each also come with a typical interaction model. IQE usually sends a new query to the server and returns a new set of results. Clustering interaces, like Clusty.com typically allow users to choose one cluster at a time to view. Faceted browsers, like Flamenco or mSpace, typically allow users to apply and unapply a series of filters.

My question is how much of the effect is down to the method and which is down to the interaction model. Marti Hearst wrote a great article in the CACM that highlighted the advantages of faceted exploration over clustering, but the majority of her highlights are over quality of data produced, such as the completeness of categories produced.

It would be interesting to compare the specific effect of interaction style. Such as allowing users to apply and unapply a series of interactive query refinemements, rather than sending off new queries as a new starting point. The nearest I can think to research doing this is the work by Hoeber, which allows users to turn on and off query refinement filters on the list of results. The aim of such a specific study would be to analyse the benefit of implementing more increasingly complicated backends, instead of simply improving the interactivity of the search interface and the range of search tactics they support.

Concert for the deaf?

2009-02-27T21:05:00.002Z

One of the most amazing people I ever had the pleasure of working with, is putting on a multi-sensory concert for the deaf. Her work on modelling the human cochlea is being tested as part of a audio-responsive chair in a live concert designed for the hearing impaired.

I'm sure it will be an amazing experience for both the gig-goers, the bands, and the researchers seeing their creative work in action!

Is Web-based Exploratory search on the increase?

2009-02-26T15:03:00.002Z

I read an interesting paper by Vakkari's team, on the different queries submitted to libraries via an online form, between 1999 and 2006. The trends are quite interesting, and one of the conclusions is that topic-related searches have reduced in libraries because they are, instead, being performed more on the web. This creates two questions about topic-searching on the web:

1) many HCIR style papers assume that this is hard to do on the web, but this research suggests its happening more anyway. This is perhaps because its more convenient to access the web now, than it is to drive across town. The service they analysed, however, was an online library query service (in Finland).

2) This is surely motivation for providing better exploratory search interfaces on the web, to help people explore and learn topics - why has it only dropped from 57% to 47%? Why not further?

They also conclude that people still turn to librarians for difficult searching problems. This really is motivation for providing better exploratory search interfaces, so that a) the number of topical searches to libraries goes down even more and b) so that the number of difficult questions goes down instead of up!

search interaction is short

2009-02-16T12:09:00.003Z

*warning - read the comments below before you read the article discussed here*

I came across an interesting article which is, to some extent, both a challenge for interactive information retrieval, and a blow to idea that search should be like a conversation (rather than guessing a searcher's intentions). One of their notable findings is that the average search session is 2.9 interactions long. Nice to see that its not considering search session length in terms of time (a common metric, but not always applicable during information seeking), but instead in the number of interactions. This is something in the vein of my own research.

This finding really only allows 1) an initial search, 2) an interactive refinement and/or a scroll, and 3) a selection. This also assumes, since the 2.9 is less than 3, that one of these is optional. and its unlikely to be the searching or the selecting. I want to go over the paper in some more detail, but its certainly interesting.

ambiguous query terms

2009-02-16T11:52:00.002Z

Since my last entry, on what to do with more generic query terms, I have come across a few sources about this. First, I happened to review a paper on the topic, which I of course can't say more about. Second, I have happened upon an interesting journal article looking at identifying ambiguous terms. It's by no means the only research to try and do this, but their recent work has found only around 16% of online queries are what they define as ambiguous.

Finally, an interesting blogger, has mentioned an alternative search engine called DuckDuckGo, which, I'm pleased to say, does almost exactly as I discussed in my previous entry. As you can see with the standard ambiguous example of apple, it breaks down results into groups that cover a range of its different domain relations, which can be used for interactive query expansion. Give it a try. They have a nice list of their defining features. I'm currently using it as my default search engine now too.

generality of query terms

2009-02-10T11:39:00.002Z

An excellent blogger, named Daniel Tunkelang, recently brought up a discussion, within a discussion, on determining the exploratory nature of a query. He questions whether this is worth it. This is a very interesting focus. Ryen White has published a number of papers on determining exploratory style queries, and the effect of expertese on search style, which are very interesting and certainly related to this challenge.

The excerpt that daniel refers to, from another blog, is on how search engines should react to the terms 'vietnam travel' in comparison to 'vietnam population'. For the former, Yahoo, Google, and Live all bring up different top results, but all based around travel guides. For the latter, Google and Live try to answer the question directly. All three link to the wikipedia page on vietnamese demographics.

Term generality is an interesting case in this example. The term 'travel' has a broader network in wordnet, than population. Naturally, the more generic a term, like travel, the more broadly it will be used on the web, and so naturally generic terms bring out less specific web results, or greater variation in the highest ranked pages. Live search provides 'related queries' for both, where the travel query has many query expansions, the population query provides a series of sibling queries, like korean population.

Instead, however, determining the generality of a term, or its breadth of use on the web, calls for a good opportunity to directly and intentionally provide diversity in search results. That is, instead of letter the breadth of use on the web naturally lead to varience in results, to specifically expose the varience in results, and aim to cover them.

From an exploratory serach perspective, its interesting because it would be different to interactive query expansion, in that the search engine would be providing key results from each of the recommended query expansions, and so the interaction would be different. It, instead, may convert to exploratory behaviour, rather than directed re-querying.

Tracking people with phones: an example of good

2009-01-13T11:24:00.004Z

There was both a wonderful result, and a brilliant information integration story today in the news. An girl was found by taking approximate GPS signal locations and google maps street view. First, brilliant that she was found safely. Second, this is the sort of thing that people are both scared of being unduely monitored. Here is a case, though, when you really do want the right people to be able to find you through simply the signal of your mobile phone. I like the additional notion here, however, that the street view was important in finding seeing which buildings, such a hotel, were in that area. Although they knew where abouts she was roughly, the street view helped them stake out possible locations that would fit with the abductor travelling.

anyway. good all round i think.

Karen Spärck Jones' homepage gone :(

2008-12-27T16:20:00.003Z

I'm a little bit sad to have to edit Wikipedia entry on Karen Spärck Jones and remove the link to her home page on University of Cambridge Computer Science department's web space, as it appears to have been removed. This would have been a nice snapshot of history to have kept online, even if they have added an obituary and CV to their site.

Enjoying the holiday break - I hope you are too.

Quiet Blog

2008-12-15T08:00:00.002Z

Despite promising to be more vocal on my blog, a very unsmooth move of house means that i have barely seen the internet! I have been searching a lot though. which box is X in, etc. More to come here soon. Max

Search Result Layouts

2008-12-05T14:23:00.003Z

With the release of Yahoo's search monkey, and Google's Search Wiki, its been pretty exciting to see big companies (beyond Ask.com who set off with some novel aspects like adding a thumbnail per result) experimenting heavily with their layouts. I didn't even notice for ages something different that Live Search does - if a Wikipedia entry is a result, then it puts the whole first paragraph of the entry as the text snippit, regardless of how long it is (it seems). This appears to have occured because the first paragraph of a Wikipedia entry is perhaps the best overview of that topic you're gonna get. This is contrary to the policy, promoted academically by White et al in SIGIR02, that putting the sentences that includes your keywords in the result is currently the best policy.

Search Monkey is interesting, too, because it allows you, as a user, to control how your web search results come up. If you want a special view of imdb results, or wikipedia results, you just include the available extra template. It will be interesting to see if representations stablise any time soon to produce a new standard after the now familiar: name, snippit, link combo.

I'm Back...

2008-12-05T14:17:00.003Z

I've been totally off radar now for 3 months according to my last post! Where did it all go wrong? I blame the thesis! I've been all over the place recently, interning at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and trying to finish of my PhD work, that I put myself down into a work hole, until i realised that i'd cut myself off from some of the best resources available to me: like Daniel Tunkelang's Blog: The Noisy Channel. Step 1, obviously, was to read the >150 posts of his I was behind on. Always worth a read.

During that time, however, I've been stewing over a lot of cool stuff that I've seen including some pretty interesting events in London. I'll get right back on the horse with the next post!

Exploratory Search or Cognitive Overload

2008-08-26T23:59:00.003+01:00

I've been pretty quiet here on the blog recently. I hear that's what happens when you are writing up your thesis!

Anyway, recently I wrote about how cognitive load theory might help us understand any negative effects of adding more exploratory search features. The example I used was that faceted search might overload users with too much information, given all the metadata that is presented. Well I have written a technical report on it. So give it a read if you like!

Freebase Parallax

2008-08-14T13:15:00.003+01:00

The video of the new Parallax interface for Freebase, recently distributed by David Huynh, is brilliant. I totally recommend you watch it. A fellow exploratory search fanatic, Daniel Tunkelang, has blogged about its qualities in terms of linking between different entity types, which is quite special.

What I especially love about is the simple clear layout metaphor that it uses. It's a very clean left-to-right system (although this, i suppose, is more familiar for Western countries). It works a little like this: Your current results are smack bam in the middle infront of you. Anything to the left is something 'before' and anything to the right is something 'after'. The facets on the left are ones that apply to the current type of object in the results list. So if you select an item from any of the facets to the left (which are 'before' your current results) your results are reduced/filtered. The example in the video is that you are looking at a list of presidents, and by selecting a political party on the left, the presidents are filtered.

The facets on the right, however, are different types of related objects that you could move 'forward' to from your current data. The example they give is to the presidents' children. This moves you forward to see a list of people who were the children of (the filtered set of) presidents. They have different (or though some will overlap (like gender)) facets on the left which can be used to further reduce the children shown. The facets on the right are new objects that you can move 'foward' to from children.

All the while the left to right progress is mirrored by a left-to-right breadcrumb above the current information so you can see the steps 'forward' you took.

its all very nice, clean, clear, and still lets you browse endlessly through interconnected heterogenous data types. Nothing less that you expect from David Huynh!

can faceted search overload users?

2008-08-11T18:24:00.004+01:00

For a while now, its been a concern for mSpace that we have been classified as good for intermedia/expert users, when lots of our work has focussed on making searching easier for people. We showed that the spatial layout was good for elderly people whose working memory was less capable at remembering things as other brosers change their layouts over time. Having said that, we too have watched participants of userstudies experience a moment when they first see the interface, with not knowing where to start.

An approach taken by other faceted browsers, such as the one provided by Endeca, is to change the layout a lot, but by taking away the decisions that people have made, so that all they have to do is look at the most important factors remaining. It's the same policy that google have - keep the options and ui as simple and clear as possible.

I've been seeking a way of finding out once and for all if there is a measurable aspect of UIs that we can use to prove that one way is better than the other. or that there is no difference at all. Certianly in mSpace we have shown that any overload experienced at first soon expire, and users have a real rich experience during search. Can mSpace be redesigned slightly to remove this initial wall and still give them the added richness of interaction that we have been striving to improve over the years.

Excitedly, i read a paper on cognitive load theory this morning on the train, which talks about what aspects of computer interfaces might make it harder for people to find and learn from information. I think this may hold the answer I have been looking for. It has measures and terms within the cognitive load theory for the effect caused by having duplicate, or redundant, or combined sources of information, on peoples ability to clearly and easily use a UI. I'm going to try running some numbers to see if any significant differences in the approaches taken to faceted browsing that might reveal why mspace is deemed intermediate/expert, and the approaches used by websites like walmart and diy.com are deemed simple for novices.

The Tetris Model of Information Seeking

2008-07-28T07:58:00.003+01:00

The more and more I've been reading about other models of information seeking (such as Marchionini 1995 and Kuhlthau 1993 and many more), the more I've been annoyed by how limited to a sequential flow they are. In Marchionini's, for example, there's a clear progression from problem identification, to specification, to seeking action, result viewing and resolving the problem. The model has this nice step towards the end that says 'refinement' and the text has a clause to say that people may drop back to almost any previous point. I believe a text clause like that is an indication that there should be a better way to model Information Seeking.

The thing I did like, was that each step was a different rectangular shape, based on how much time and computer involvement it required, as the two dimensions. These two observations about the model have led me to my tetris model of search, which I'm going to blog about here for a bit to test the water. You'll probably see followup blogs! I've got a lot to say about it!

Now, in Tetris, different shapes fall from the top of the screen, and success is modelled by organising them so that entire horizontal lines are made, removed from the display and converted to points. Let's first take the analogy that resolving an information seeking problem is like clearing a line of the board and that solving a bigger problem is like clearing multiple lines of the board, and finally that your score is representative of the overall knowledge you have on that topic.

Let us then imagine that the pieces that fall down from the top of the screen are then any one of the stages that are found in models like those mentioned above, where the ideal is that you get a series of simple pieces, representing a simple problem, a simple spec, a simple query, and a simple answer. BAM one line, problem solved.

BUT we all know that life is not like that, and regularly you get a nice simple first block (or you think you have a simple problem to solve) and then you get a + shape answer when you view the results that tells you your problem is a little more complicated than that. What we begin to see is that the complexity of a problem is actually represented not by the pieces, but by the current depth of the board. Each piece, therefore, represents an action, such as realising a problem, performing a query, etc.

So, a simple lookup on google is represented by a series of easy bits (specing, querying, viewing, etc) fitting together nicely and a line clearing. If you have a complex problem, however, the first bit you get is complex, like a +, and then you may need a combination of queries, and results to resolve your problem, and shift the 3 lines built by the +. Exploratory search can also be modelled with this analogy. If a user starts with a simple problem and starts off by querying for 'classical music' and then the first resullt says well there are lots of types of classical music:.... this means the next piece you got was a + and so getting an answer to your first query broadens the work you have to do to better understand classical music. Then, over time, you can resolve bits of information, find new problems you need to learn about. get some simple answers to fill in the gaps. Over time you may find that there are always rows with holes in, that you might take years to get back to them and fill them.

that was long, but think about it. I think its a pretty good analogy. Comments?

When should users be made to think?

2008-07-25T11:58:00.004+01:00

I've been a little quiet, I know. I've been working hard consulting for an interesting new client on a project that has, yet again, completely consumed my interests with new challenges. In this case, its amazed me that one of the primary concerns of this project has not been to make the interaction as quick and simple as possible, but to produce software that is a) intuitive and b) coerces users into thinking about the appropriate things at the appropriate times.

I've noticed this has become a recurring theme in many scenarios. The first time I heard something along this line was an argument against automating the jobs of pilots, but for making the jobs easier. If pilots get used to the plane doing most of the jobs for them, they may become less capable when the plane malfunctions. However, if the actions are made easier to perform, then the skill is maintained, but the usability has improved.

Search can be considered in a similar way. While lots of search designs are focused on letting users express the knowledge or known constraints that they do have quickly, this can leave users with problems when they have to choose between their results using facets that they have not considered. In this case, we do not at all want to make assumptions, but at the same time, we do not want to leave them to make a decision with only a list of options to do so with.

In some of our previous work we have investigated how giving users example (ideally multimedia) result items that would be associated with each of the items in their new decision. This means that users are become aware of things that the should think about before they buy, AND give them the means to understand the effect of their decisions. Another approach mSpace has taken is to be subjunctive, by allowing users to easily change their mind, or considered another way: rapidly tryout different options by minimising the costs of reversing their decision. To do this mSpace maintains all of the options a user was given at each step, so that the user, with a single click, can switch between different items in the same facet, and see the effect is has on the results.

viacom aint all bad - perhaps i love viacom?

2008-07-16T07:30:00.004+01:00

I've been a bit quiet recently, having been travelling to institutions around the UK, and then vacationing a bit. But i was pleased to see the news on the row between YouTube and Viacom. Thankfully they have agreed to let Google anonymise the usage histories that will be sent to Viacom as part of the ongoing copyright legal battle.

This only leads me to think that Viacom has created an even more perfect dataset for us to run user analysis over, like the longditudinal study we recently presented at JCDL2008 this year. I assume each user will get an anonymous ID, so that anonymous individual activity can be followed?

Can we have it after you Viacom? We'd love you!

the world is connected

2008-07-05T08:16:00.005+01:00

actually, from the map it looks like the 1st world is connected at least.

interesting visualisation, though, of twitter conversations.

compared to some of the other network visualisations, this one shows how being grounded in a known 2.5D space makes it a lot more accessible.

best search dataset ever?

2008-07-04T09:57:00.003+01:00

In a current lawsuit between Google's YouTube and Viacom, Google have been instructed to hand over their logs of user viewing habits. Google are upset about it, but at least the judge overruled the request for Google to hand over their source code for filtering copyrighted material! Google have requested, although its not been confirmed yet I believe, that they get to anonymise the logs first, to respect the users' privacy. i personally hope this is allowed.

Anyway, despite this interesting privacy issue, i can't help but thinking that 12 terabytes of usage logs from youtube would be an AMAZING research resource for investigating user behaviour. Sadly they dont have facets to chat about, but it could tell us how people have used query refinements, spelling corrections, categories, filters, similar clips, recommended clips and so much more!

Google might as well do something useful with it, if the data is going to shown to at least one third party.

the best way to provide faceted search?

2008-06-28T09:46:00.003+01:00

As research has produced an increasing number of insights into the different ways of providing faceted metadata to users in the form of a faceted browser, the question has become: what actually is the best way to provide faceted search? This same question has not really been seen in typical information retrieval, as each bit of research has (usually) incrementally improved the system performance, and a good keyword-based search system will try to include all the advancements in their UI (not that Google is providing interactive query refinements).

We actually do see faceted search all over the place. iTunes has it in their 'browser' function (3 columns that filter to the right). Google product search lets you refine by facets like brand and price (each facet filters every other facet). Endeca seem to be selling it to everyone these days (right on!), including Walmart and Borders.

There are actually 2 layers to this question: how best to provide a faceted classification and how best to provide a faceted browser. The earlier has been well investigated, with advice from Marti Hearst. Endeca certainly seem to ask 'after each click in a facet, what is the best set of facets and values to show the user?'. The second question is less well known. Even one of Endeca's clients, the NCSU library, are asking: should we have the facets on the left or the right?, should we place a breadcrumb or a list of decisions?. How does this affect the user?

Further to these layout questions, I have been trying to work out for a while now whether the structured and consistent iTunes approach is better or worse than the dynamic adaptive approach taken by Endeca? Especially with all the additional functionality (e.g. column swapping and backward highlighting) we have been adding to the iTunes-style approach with mSpace. There are even more additional questions to ask. maybe its a case of when is one better than the other? Finally, can we somehow take the best of both worlds, so that we can figure out what to add to our faceted browsers that make them incrementally strong.

privacy and social in-security

2008-06-20T18:12:00.004+01:00

Its by no means been the focus of the collaborative search workshop this week, but the issue of privacy, not surprisingly, came up in terms of what your collaborators can see about your actions. There are obvious things to be concerned about, like do you all have the same clearance, for example. But ALOT, recently, I have heard people talking not about the insecurity of the systems, but the insecurity of the users!

The example we heard here, proposed by Merrie Ringel Morris, was if you are searching for something with someone superior to yourself, and you do something stupid. what if you do not want them to see that you're being 'sub-optimal'. or if you have to look up something they said, when you are trying to make a good impression.

These are interesting privacy and 'insecurity' issues, where users still want to protect themselves. I've not seen much on it though? anybody?

first faceted system?

2008-06-18T14:07:00.004+01:00

Daniel Tunkelang, chief scientist at Endeca, has passed on an excellent entry on perhaps the first faceted system. It's actually come at a very timely point during the JCDL08 conference, where faceted browsing has been quite core to a number of discussions. I'll post more about this later. Someone even asked me about Ranganathan's colon classification (research core to the start of faceted classifications) after my talk on a longitudinal study of faceted and keyword use, and now i have link to research it further - thanks Daniel.

collaborative IR workshop

2008-06-16T00:34:00.005+01:00

Let me start by apologising for any rubbish you find below - i just landed in pittsburgh for JCDL08. I keep going form hot sweats to shivers depending on if i'm outdoors or in!

Next week is the, what looks to be, exciting first international workshop on collaborative information retrieval. to be clear, the main focus is on teams of people trying to achieve a shared goal, either co-located or distributed, and either at the same time, or asynchronously.

One of the papers sets itself out from the crowd, as far as I am concerned, but also worries me slightly. Instead of delving straight into ideas of communication and task-allocation, one author (who shall remain nameless till after the workshop - but attendees have been asked to read each paper before the event) steps back and asks: what is the definition of collaboration, and how does it differ to/consume cooperation, coordination, and many more similar terms. His paper is clearly well researched and well informed, but the level of model-detail also worries me: how much detail is too much detail on these things, when designing a model. Interfaces that try to differentiate/support each individually could be confusing. The discussion will certainly be valuable, and that and other papers will make a very intersting workshop. stay tuned to hear more about it.

first time for JCDL08!

exhibiting exploratory behaviour

2008-06-12T08:46:00.002+01:00

Next week I am giving a talk on our paper at JCDL08, on the longitudinal real-world usage of a website that has both faceted and keyword search persistently available. One of the aims of this research was to see how people changed behaviour over time, as they grew more familiar with both the data and the website. This is motivated, of course, by the notion of Exploratory Search, which represents users who dont necessarily know what they are looking for or how to find it.

It has only struck me recently how undefined exploratory behaviour really is. Originally, it was suggested that people who are exploring would click around on things such as facets and categories, rather than keyword search, because they do not know what to search for. Then later they would keyword search, because they have learned whats available on the site.

The alternative view is that people who really don't know what to search for, start with the 'vague query', and then use the facets to refine.

What we saw in the study is that people exhibit either pattern of behaviour at any stage, and this idea of order is not the variable that defines exploratory behaviour. For example, some experienced users were using the facets to produce very specific queries, rather than typing boolean queries into the keyword search box. Similarly, we saw experienced users start with a keyword search and then narrow the results down effectively.

So what variables do identify exploratory behaviour? is it this effective behaviour? if we see a lot of similar queries or a lot of swap and change within one facet does that make them a learner? because i can sure think of occasions when one problem involves selecting lots of items in a column, regardless of whether im good or bad at it: where to go on holiday? you could select lots of countries and cities.

one of our earlier papers (a few years ago) thought maybe it was the idea of backing out of your decisions.

in the beginning...

2008-06-12T08:20:00.007+01:00

...there was space - for blogging. Inspired by the ever interesting blogs produced by Daniel Tunkelang (Chief Scientist at Endeca), on the topics of HCI and IR/IS, I have decided to try and blog some of my own thoughts. I'd put some in here, but then the title would be misleading, and then it would be much harder to find! The interesting stuff should start asap.