New Informer – Spring 2013

Just in case you missed it, here are the details of this month’s Informer, which came out last week. As usual, lots of good stuff, with great mix of feature articles, research pieces and group overviews. For further details see the Informer website. Or if you fancy becoming a contributor, get in touch!

Informer: Spring 2013 Issue Out Now!

Editorial

By Udo Kruschwitz

Welcome back! This spring 2013 edition of Informer will bring you a range of fairly different articles, perhaps just the right mix for this time of the year. More about the articles later, let us first have a glimpse at what has been going on in the IR community. [...]

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Search Interface Design (workshop at ESE 2013)

Just a quick shout out that on Tues May 14 I’ll be leading a workshop at Enterprise Search Europe on the subject of Search Interface Design. It’ll be held at the Hilton London Olympia, and will consist of a mix of formal presentations, group work and discussion. Above all, it’s a chance to discuss with like-minded folks your own challenges in the world of search interface design and usability, and to share ideas, best practices and solutions. I’ve appended a longer abstract below. If you have any queries, just drop me a line.

Hope to see you there!

Search that sucks

OK, I know it’s a bit of a provocative (and frivolous) title, but it was either that or “Anti-patterns for Search”, which is somewhat less transparent… Anyway, the point is that although this site focuses on sharing best practices for search usability and user-centred design in general, we sometimes learn more by studying examples of the opposite, i.e. poor practice. The thing about UX design is that when executed well it fades into the background, letting us get on with the task at hand and not worry about the machinery of the interaction. It isn’t until we encounter flawed design that we are jolted out of our flow and forced to make choices that don’t seem to fit with either our expectations or the natural course of our activity.

Search usability: filters and facets (training course in April)

In case you missed it last time (since it filled up pretty quickly), there’s another chance to catch my search usability tutorial in Edinburgh on April 24. I’ll be presenting a full day course called Search Usability: Filters and Facets, which focuses on faceted search and provides deeper coverage of the key topics along with a variety of new practicals and group exercises.

It’s also very competitively priced from just £170 per person – contrast that with a rate of ~£659 a day for this comparable offering!

For further details and registration, see the UKeIG website. In the meantime, I’ve appended further details below.

Hope to see you there!

Search and the Rorschach ink blot: do you see what I see?

Folks who follow this blog will know that I try to strike a balance between topical, practitioner-oriented pieces and more academic articles such as scientific papers & other peer-reviewed content. I’m not always successful, but firmly believe that the most valuable use of this channel is to provide practical insights backed up by a solid theoretical basis wherever possible. Of course, it’s not an easy line to tread… get the balance wrong and you can end up with worthy but dull academic pieces that extend only marginally beyond the bounds of a narrow research community. Or conversely, anecdotal experiences that have little chance of delivering insights that generalise to other contexts and individuals.

Designing Search Usability (tutorial at CHI 2013)

Just a quick heads up that on Thursday 2^nd May I’ll be presenting a tutorial at CHI 2013 in Paris called Designing Search Usability. This is part of a programme of training courses offered throughout the conference week, so there are lots more to choose from. Personally I wouldn’t mind attending the Speech-based Interaction course as well.

The course represents a wholesale revision of my original tutorial, updated to accommodate new concepts and exercises drawn from the book “Designing the Search Experience: the Information Architecture of Discovery”, published by Morgan Kaufmann in December 2012.

It’s also very competitively priced at just 20 euro per session (although it appears this rate is only available to conference attendees). For further details and registration, see the CHI 2013 website. In the meantime, I’ve appended further details below.

Hope to see you there!

Informer – Winter 2013 edition

Better late than never – the Winter 2013 edition of Informer is finally out. Further details below. Enjoy!

Informer: Winter 2013 Issue Out Now!

http://irsg.bcs.org/informer/

Editorial

By Udo Kruschwitz

Fed up with the snow? Tired of writing SIGIR papers?  No exam papers to mark? Then why not take a glass of whisky, sit by the fire and read this new issue of Informer … We have prepared quite a mix of articles this time. We start with an idea that the older readers will remember. [...]

http://irsg.bcs.org/informer/2013/01/editorial-5/

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