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Designing Searchfor Humans

Dr. Marti HearstUC Berkeley

DC UPA October 15, 2010

Consider the Human

FeelingsLanguage, Memory, and Planning

Sociability

Shutterstock: http://www.faqs.org/photo-dict/phrase/3404/emoticons.html

Feelings

AestheticsEmotional Stages

Flow

5

Feelings: The Importance of Aesthetics

With an aesthetically pleasing design:

People will enjoy working with it more

People will persist searching longer

People will choose it even if it is less efficient

Nakarada-Kordic & Lobb, 2005, Ben-Basset et al. 2006, Parush et al. 1998, van der Heijden 2003

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Feelings: The Importance of Aesthetics

Small details matter A left hand side line vs. a box for ads

The line integrates the results into the page

Balancing white space with content

Balancing font color, shape, and weight

Hotchkiss 2007

8

Feelings

Kuhlthau on informational AND emotional stages in search

(Assuming novice researchers engaged in challenging tasks)

Initiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

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Feelings



Uncertainty and apprehensionInitiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

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Feelings



Uncertainty and apprehension

Confusion, uncertainty, doubt, frustration

Initiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

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Feelings




Optimism (after deciding)


Initiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

12

Feelings






Confidence dawning *

Initiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

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Feelings







Confidence growing

Initiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

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Feelings







Confidence growing

Relief and satisfaction (or disappointment)

Initiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

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Feelings: The Importance of Flow

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Feelings: The Importance of Flow

From Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. HarperCollinsvia Bederson, Interfaces for staying in the flow, ACM Ubiquity 5(7), 2004

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Properties of Interfaces with Flow

Inviting

Support interrupt-free engagement in the task

No blockages

Easy reversal of actions

Next steps seem to suggest themselves

Language, Memory, & PlanningAddress Anchoring and Vocabulary Problems

Provide Memory AidsSuggest Helpful Next Steps

Language

21

Language: The Vocabulary Problem

There are many ways to say the same thing. People remember the gist but not the actual words used.

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Language: The Vocabulary Problem

With no other context, people generate differentwords for the same concepts. The probability that two typists would suggest the same

word for a given function: .11

The probability that two college students would name anobject using the same word: .12.

Furnas et al., 1987

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Language: The Problem of Anchoring

Try this experiment:

Ariely, Predictably Irrational, 2008, Harper

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Language: The Problem of Anchoring

Try this experiment: Tell people to think of the last 2 digits of their SSN Then have them bid on something in auction The SSN numbers they thought of influences their bids.

Ariely, Predictably Irrational, 2008, Harper

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The Problem of Anchoring

Anchoring in search A user starts with a set of words, then anchors on them

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sales Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince amount sales Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince quantity sales Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince actual quantity sales Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sales actual quantity Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince all sales actual quantity all sales Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince worldwide sales Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The opposite of the Vocabulary Problem!

Russell, 2006

Provide Memory Aids

Support “Recognition Over Recall”

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Provide Memory Aids

Suggest the Search Action in or near the Query Form

www.yelp.com, www.powerset.com

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Memory Aids

Provide Access to Recent Actions

PubMed

amazon.com

Dumais et al., Stuff I’ve Seen, SIGIR 2003

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Memory Aids; Anchoring Aids

Dynamic Query Suggestions

http://netflix.com

http://google.com

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Memory Aids; Anchoring Aids

Augment suggestions with images orfaceted classes.

http://www.imamuseum.org/

http://nextbio.com

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Suggest Next Steps: Query suggestions

Show suggestions after the query has been issued.

http://bing.com

http://yahoo.com

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Suggest Next Steps: Query suggestions

http://nextbio.com

PubMed

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Suggest Next Steps: Query Destinations

Recorded search sessions for 100,000’s of users For a given query, where did the user end up?

Users generally browsed far from the search results page (~5steps)

On average, users visited 2 unique domains during the course ofa query trail, and just over 4 domains during a session trail

Show the query trail endpoint information at queryreformulation time Query trail suggestions were used more often (35.2% of the time)

than query term suggestions.

White et al., SIGIR 2007

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Suggest Next Steps: Related Documents

In some circumstances, related items work well

PubMed

amazon.com

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Putting It All Together: Faceted Navigation

Suggests next steps Helps with Vocabulary Problem and Anchoring

Problem Promotes Flow

Show users structure as a starting point, rather thanrequiring them to generate queries

Organize results into a recognizable structure

Eliminates empty results sets

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A New Development: Faceted Breadcrumbs

Nudelman, http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/faceted-finding-with

Sociability

People are Social; Computers are Lonely.Don’t Personalize Search, Socialize it!

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Social Search

Implicit: Suggestions generated as aside-effect of search activity.

Asking: Communicatingdirectly with others.

Collaboration: Working withother people on a search task.

Explicit: knowledge accumulatesvia the actions of many.

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Social Search: Asking

What do people ask of their social networks?

Type % Example

Recommendation 29%Building a new playlist – any ideas for good runningsongs?

Opinion 22%I am wondering if I should buy the Kitchen-Aid icecream maker?

Factual 17% Anyone know a way to put Excel charts into LaTeX?

Rhetorical 14% Why are men so stupid?

Invitation 9% Who wants to go to Navya Lounge this evening?

Favor 4% Need a babysitter in a big way tonight… anyone??

Social connection 3%I am hiring in my team. Do you know anyone who wouldbe interested?

Offer 1% Could any of my friends use boys size 4 jeans?

Morris et al., CHI 2010

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Social Search: Implicit Suggestions

Human-generated suggestions still beat purelymachine-generated ones Spelling suggestions

Query term suggestions

Recommendations of book, movies, etc

Ranking (clickthrough statistics)

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Social Search: Explicit HelpQuestion-Answering Sites Content produced in a manner amenable to

searching for answers to questions. Search tends to work well on these sites and on the

internet leading to these sites This suggests that for the intranet, content is best

generated and written this way.

Like an FAQ but with many authors and with the questionsthat the audience really wants the answers to.

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Explicit Suggestions: Building Knowledge

Social knowledge management tools seem promising Utilize the best of social networks, tagging, blogging,

web page creation, wikis, and search.

Millen et al., CHI 2006

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Collaborative Search

Pickens et al., SIGIR 2008

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Summary: Consider the Human

1. Feelings Emotional responses to information seeking

Aesthetics

Flow

2. Language / Memory / Planning Scaffold memory by suggesting next steps, providing context and feedback

Tools to aid with the anchoring and the vocabulary problems

3. Sociability Search as a social experience

Turning to others for certain types of task

Sharing information for next-generation knowledge management

Thank you!

Full text freely available at:

http://searchuserinterfaces.com