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.

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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 🙂

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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!

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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!

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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!

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Designing Search: training course in London, May 25

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 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 new practicals and group exercises.

It’s also very competitively priced from just £180 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!

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Designing Search – tutorial at Search Solutions 2015

Last month I announced the line-up for Search Solutions 2015, to be held at BCS London on Thurs November 26. This year we’re also offering a Tutorial Programme, which will run the day before (November 25). The programme consists of four half day-tutorials:

• 09:30-13:00 Designing Search (Dr. Tony Russell-Rose, UXLabs)
• 09:30-13:00 Crowdsourcing for Data Processing and Search (Gianluca Demartini, University of Sheffield)
• 14:00-17:30 Text Analysis with GATE (Diana Maynard, University of Sheffield)
• 14:00-17:30 Evaluating search (Paul Clough, University of Sheffield)

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 23:59 on Wednesday 11th November 2015 (i.e. tomorrow). Hope to see you there!

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UXLabs ‘Internships’ for 2015

Here’s a sample of some of the things we’re working on at UXLabs this year, neatly packaged into Masters level ‘internships’. I use quotes there as although it’s a convenient term used by many of my academic colleagues, these opportunities are (a) unpaid and (b) remote (i.e. hosted by your own institution). So maybe ‘co-supervised MSc projects initiated by a commercial partner’ is more accurate term… Anyway, what we offer is support, expertise, co-supervision and access to real world data/challenges. If you are interested in working with us on the challenges below, get in touch.

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Designing Search Usability (tutorial at Search Solutions 2014)

Last month I announced the line-up for Search Solutions 2014, to be held at BCS London on Thurs November 27. This year we’re also offering a Tutorial Programme, which will run the day before (November 26). The programme consists of four half day-tutorials:

• 09:30-13:00 Designing Search Usability (Dr. Tony Russell-Rose, UXLabs)
• 09:30-13:00 Pattern Search and Information Retrieval (Epaminondas Kapetanios, University of Westminster)
• 14:00-17:30 Text Analysis with GATE (Diana Maynard, University of Sheffield)
• 14:00-17:30 Metadata Management in SharePoint (Marc Stephenson, Metataxis)

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 23:59 on Wednesday 12th November 2014 (i.e. tomorrow!) Hope to see you there 🙂

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EuroHCIR 2014: lineup announced

I’m pleased to announce the line up for EuroHCIR 2014, which will be held at BCS London on September 13. This event is the fourth HCIR event to be held outside of the US, and as such represents a critical point in the development of the HCIR community in Europe. We’re just in the process of finalizing the programme, which will include 7 presentations, a keynote speaker and an evening social. We also hope to include an interactive group session in the afternoon – more on that later. In the meantime, I’ve appended the full list of accepted papers below. More details on the EuroHCIR website. Hope to see you there!

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