Search Usability (online training course)

On Wednesday next week (14th July) I’ll be presenting a half day course called Search Usability, courtesy of CILIP and the UKeIG in particular. This course is new in two ways:

• it’s designed exclusively for online presentation
• it combines insights from two of my previous courses: Designing the Search Experience and Search Usability: Filters and Facets

I did give some thought to the title. In particular, I’m aware that the term ‘usability’ has fallen out of favour in recent years, partly due to its connotations (in my view) as being a ‘nice to have’ feature or attribute. Instead, I prefer to frame UX in terms of ‘fitness for purpose’ or simply ‘good design’ – few would argue that those criteria are essential to any successful product or service. Moreover, they are central to the design of effective search experiences, and that’s what this course is all about.

I did also consider ‘Designing the Search Experience’, but I’ve rather beaten that title into submission in recent years, and besides, the course includes insights from UX research as well as UX design, so if you take it too literally you may incorrectly conclude that the course is aimed exclusively at designers (or individuals with such aspirations). Maybe I’m over-thinking this, but ‘Search Usability’, although it’s a bit 1990s, feels more inclusive.

Since this is only the second presentation of this particular course, its likely that we will need some flexibility in approach and content. For that reason I have included a few extra activities which I don’t expect to need on the day, but they are there just in case.

A final update: the previous presentation of this course sold out, so we said we’d do another one later in the year. As far as I’m aware, at the time of writing this there are still a few places available.

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

Hope to see you there!

Read Full Post »

Search Usability (online training course)

On Wednesday next week (17th Feb) I’ll be presenting a half day course called Search Usability, courtesy of CILIP and the UKeIG in particular. This course is new in two ways:

• it’s designed exclusively for online presentation
• it combines insights from two of my previous courses: Designing the Search Experience and Search Usability: Filters and Facets

I did give some thought to the title. In particular, I’m aware that the term ‘usability’ has fallen out of favour in recent years, partly due to its connotations (in my view) as being a ‘nice to have’ feature or attribute. Instead, I prefer to frame UX in terms of ‘fitness for purpose’ or simply ‘good design’: few would argue that those criteria are essential to any successful product or service. Moreover, they are central to the design of effective search experiences, and that’s what this course is all about.

I did also consider ‘Designing the Search Experience’, but I’ve rather beaten that title into submission in recent years, and besides, the course includes insights from UX research as well as UX design, so if you take that title too literally you may incorrectly conclude that the course was aimed exclusively at designers (or individuals with such aspirations). Maybe I’m over-thinking this, but ‘Search Usability’, although it’s a bit 1990s IMHO, feels more inclusive.

Since this is the inaugural presentation of this course, its likely that we will need some flexibility in approach and content. For that reason I have included extra activities which I don’t expect to need on the day, but they are there just in case.

A final update: we just closed registrations for this presentation as we are now fully booked. But if there’s enough demand, we’ll do another presentation later in the year.

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

Hope to see you there!

Read Full Post »

Search Usability: Filters and Facets (training course in London)

In case you missed it last time (since it filled up pretty quickly), there’s another chance to catch my full-day designing search tutorial in London on April 25. 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 practicals and group exercises.

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

Hope to see you there!

Read Full Post »

Search Usability: Filters and Facets (training course in London)

In case you missed it last time (since it filled up pretty quickly), there’s another chance to catch my full-day designing search tutorial in London on September 18. 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 practicals and group exercises.

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

Hope to see you there!

Read Full Post »

Designing search: models and metaphors

It’s often said that search is a conversation: a dialog between two participants that can be every bit as rich as human conversation. On one side is the user, with an information need articulated in the form of a query, and on the other side is the system, with its response in the form of a set of search results. Like human conversation, the outcome relies on a shared understanding of intent and context. Together, these elements form a crucial part of the search experience, guiding and shaping the dialog in productive directions.

But the conversational metaphor can only take us so far. There are levels of nuance to the linguistic interaction between human beings that go beyond simple bidirectional exchanges, and likewise, there are patterns and sequences of human information seeking behavior that transcend the conversational metaphor. At this level, we need to take a more holistic approach, and view search from the perspective of stages in an information journey. In this post, we consider one such model of the information journey that is valuable for both its simplicity and utility.

Read Full Post »

Tutorials at Search Solutions 2017

As you may recall last month I announced the line-up for Search Solutions 2017, to be held at BCS London on November 29. I’m pleased to announce that this year we’ll also be offering a Tutorial Programme, which will run the preceding day (Tuesday 28th). The programme consists of three half day-tutorials:

• 09:30-13:00 Designing Search (Dr. Tony Russell-Rose, UXLabs)
• 14:00-17:30 Text Analysis with GATE (Diana Maynard, University of Sheffield)
• 14:00-17:30 Searching the Linked Open Data Cloud (Epaminondas Kapetanios, University of Westminster )

My tutorial is fully booked now, but I’ve appended further details below in case you’re interested in attending a future presentation. Last year I attended Diana’s tutorial on GATE and can highly recommend it as an excellent introduction to the platform and NLP in general. This year I am looking forward to Epaminondas’s tutorial on linked open data – very timely and topical!

Full details of pricing and registration are available on the Search Solutions website. Note that the closing date for bookings is Sunday 26th November. Hope to see you there 🙂

Read Full Post »

Designing faceted search (training course in London)

In case you missed it last time (since it filled up pretty quickly), there’s another chance to catch my full-day designing search tutorial in London on May 10. 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.

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

Hope to see you there!

Read Full Post »

Designing Search – tutorial at Search Solutions 2016

Last month I announced the line-up for Search Solutions 2016, to be held at BCS London on November 30. This year we’re also offering a Tutorial Programme, which will run the day before. The programme consists of four half day-tutorials:

• 09:30-13:00 Designing Search (Dr. Tony Russell-Rose, UXLabs)
• 09:30-13:00 Query Log Mining for Inferring User Tasks and Needs , (Emine Yilmaz and Rishabh Mehrotra, UCL)
• 14:00-17:30 Text Analysis with GATE (Diana Maynard, University of Sheffield)
• 14:00-17:30 Enterprise search evaluation – good practice in action, (Paul Clough, University of Sheffield and Martin White, Intranet Focus Ltd)

I’ve appended further details of my tutorial below. Full details of pricing and registration are available on the Search Solutions website. Note that the closing date for bookings is Friday 25th November 2016. Hope to see you there!

Read Full Post »

Search Usability: Filters & Facets

In case you missed it last time (since it filled up pretty quickly), there’s another chance to catch my full-day designing search tutorial in London on October 12. 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.

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

Hope to see you there!

Read Full Post »

Supporting Discovery of Archival Collections: Challenges and Opportunities

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting the keynote talk at the Supporting Discovery of Archival Collections: Challenges and Opportunities workshop, held at Wellcome Trust in London. The day was a thoroughly enjoyable mix of presentations and discussions and I learned a great deal. Many thanks to Paul Clough and his fellow organizers Paula Goodale (Sheffield University), Chris Hilton (Wellcome Trust), Sarah Higgins (Aberystwyth University) and Pauline Rafferty (Aberystwyth University). There are plans to produce a paper summarising the workshop findings which I very much look forward to seeing. In the meantime, the slides from my own talk are appended below, titled “Designing the Search Experience: The Language of Discovery”.

Read Full Post »