[Sigia-l] ROI/Value of Search Engine Design - Resources?

[Scott McDaniel]

At 10:56 AM 2/18/2003 -0500, Ken Bryson wrote:
>At this point I'm surprise nobody has brought up the issue (albeit
>librarian-centric) of  known item vs. subject searching. That is, depending
>on whether you know exactly what you're looking for (Linksys Wifi) or just
>the general category/subject of items (wireless routers), you will likely
>take a different route to finding your information.
>
>Debating the usage of category browsing vs. searching based primarily on how
>people use ecommerce or online news sites, seems to limit the debate a bit
>too much.

I don't have an MLS, but my wife does.  We recently co-authored an article 
that appeared in the second volume of UPA's User Experience magazine.  The 
complete reference is:

McDaniel, S. and McDaniel, M. (2002) The Big Dig: Mining Nuggets of Value. 
User Experience, 1:2, 20-29.

In the article we note that the current heuristics about how to produce a 
good search interface were so general as to be next to useless.  Since the 
answer to specific questions always seems to be "it depends," we proposed 
three dimensions upon which "it" could depend.  Most of the heuristics came 
from current literature (NNG's report on search, Jared's book, LIS 
textbooks, Tog on Interface, etc).  Some are proposed heuristics without 
research support.  If you'd like the complete set of heuristics, see the 
article if you have access to the magazine or contact me off list.

The basic idea is that you determine where your users fall on each of these 
three dimensions:

Type of User (How familiar is the user with the information being searched?)
   -- Casual Searcher (have a passing interest in the material.  Most 
e-commerce shoppers.)
   -- Interested Layperson (understands basic jargon and wants to learn more)
   -- Subject Matter Expert (thorough understanding of the material)

Search Experience (How much experience or training has the user had in 
searching?)
   -- Novice Searcher (typically enter a search word and press enter)
   -- Intermediate Searcher (understand basic Boolean searching)
   -- Advanced Searcher (are trained search professionals)

Goal of the Search (What type of information is the object of the search?)
   -- Precision Search (locates a specific, known item)
   -- Recall Search (locates all items that meet given criteria)
   -- Some Good Items (locates a small set of items that best meet given 
criteria)

Each value on these dimensions has a small set of associated 
heuristics.  By determining where your user falls on each scale, you derive 
a full set of heuristics for the search interface.  I'm including a brief 
excerpt from the article below.

I've seen a couple of Jared's presentations (most recently the Scent of 
Information, given to the UPA DC Metro chapter).  My impression is that 
most of the people he tests would be:

   Casual Searchers or Interested Laypersons
   Novice Searchers
   Precision or Some Good Items

I'd hesitate to generalize findings for these people to all Search 
situations.  (Jared -- Are my impressions above correct?)

     Scott McD.


Here's the specific excerpt I mentioned earlier:

Let’s take the case of Albert the Bookstore Associate to illustrate how 
this works.

Albert is receiving many requests for books about Alzheimer’s.  Because 
Albert is not an expert on Alzheimer’s or particularly motivated beyond a 
customer’s request, he is best classified as an Casual Searcher, and 
because he, like most bookstore employees, have limited search experience, 
he is best classified as a Novice searcher.  Since his customers don’t have 
specific books in mind, Albert must perform a “some good items” search to 
recommend a few choices.  Combining these results, leads to the following 
set of guidelines:

§       Offer a simple search box on the home page and on each page 
throughout the site.
§       Present information in the search results that allows users to 
assess relevance.
§       Allow Casual Searchers in an e-commerce setting to search for 
things other than products.
§       Allow Casual Searchers to search for items with their own vocabulary.
§       Consider alternatives to a  search.
§       Global search is better than a scoped search.
§       Lead Novice searchers through the search dialogue.
§       Present the search results clearly and simply.
§       Make it easy to evaluate individual result items.
§       Allow users to save and resume Recall searches. (Also applies to 
“some good items”)
§       Make it easy to expand searches as well as narrow them.
§       Search globally.
§       Accept word variants, word-stemming, and synonyms for search terms.
§       Make a simplified reference interview an optional part of the 
search process.
§       Support the task of creating a short list of results.

Inspecting the guidelines reveals some redundancies, such as “Global search 
is better than scoped search” and “Search globally.”  These are easily 
consolidated.  But what happens if the guidelines conflict?  Short of 
flipping a coin, the best way to make a decision is to look at data from 
your user analysis.  Give more weight to the needs of your primary 
users.  You might also consider whether you in fact need two different user 
interfaces (text entry search vs. a category browse), or even two different 
products.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scott McDaniel
Cognetics Corporation, Designer

1320 Fenwick Lane, Suite 209, Silver Spring, MD 20910
301.587.7549   --  scottmcd at cognetics.com  --  fax 301.562.8267
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