The Perfect Search Engine Is Not Enough Jaime

The Perfect Search Engine Is Not Enough Jaime Teevan, MIT with Christine Alvarado, Mark Ackerman and David Karger

Let Me Interview You! l Web: –What’s the last Web page you visited? How did you get there? –Have you looked for anything on the Web? l Email: –What’s the last email you read? What did you do with it? –Have you gone back to an email you’ve read before? l Files: –What’s the last file you looked at? How did you get to it? –Have you looked for a file?

Overview: Understanding Directed Search l l Introduction Related work Methodology What we learned – – How? Prefer to search in steps Why? Because it’s easier Who? Step size varies by person So what?

Haystack: Personal Information Storage Email Haystack Files Web pages Calendar Contacts

Directed Search in Haystack What was that paper I read last week about Information Retrieval? Haystack

Directed Search in Haystack Ah yes! Thank you. Haystack

…Or Elsewhere Ah yes! Thank you. “Perfect Search Engine”

Related Work l Directed search – – l l Lab studies [Capra 03, Maglio 97] Log analysis [Broder 02, Spink 01] Observational studies [Malone 83] Information Seeking – – Marchionini, O’Day and Jeffries, Bates, Belkin, … Evolving information need

Modified Diary Study l l l Subjects: 15 CS graduate students Ten interviews each (2/day x 5 days) Two question types – – l Last email/file/Web page looked at Last email/file/Web page looked for Supplemented with direct observation and an hour-long semi-structured interview

Overview: Understanding Directed Search l l Introduction Related work Methodology What we learned – – How? Why? Who? So what?

Directed Search Today l Target: Connie Monroe’s office number Type into a search engine: “Connie Monroe, office number”

What We Observed Interviewer: Have you looked for anything on the Web today? Jim: I had to look for the office number of the Harvard professor. I: So how did you go about doing that? J: I went to the homepage of the Math department at Harvard

What We Observed I: So you went to the Math department, and then what did you do over there? J: It had a place where you can find people and I went to that page and they had a dropdown list of visiting faculty, and so I went to that link and I looked for her name and there it was.

What We Observed J: I knew that she had a very small Web page saying, “I’m here at Harvard. Here’s my contact information. ”

Strategies Looking for Information Teleporting Orienteering

Why Do People Orienteer? l l The tools don’t work Easier than saying what you want You know where you are You know what you find

Easier Than Saying What You Want l Describing the target is hard – – l Habit – l Can’t Prefer not to “Whichever way I remember first. ” Search for source – E. g. , Your last email search

You Know Where You Are l Stay in known space – – – l URL manipulation Bookmarks History Backtracking – – Following an information scent Never end up at a dead end

You Know What You Find l Context gives understanding of answer “I was looking for a specific file. But even when I saw its name, I wouldn’t have known that was the file I wanted until I saw all of the other names in the same directory…” l Understanding negative results “I basically clicked on every single button until I was convinced… I don’t think that it exists…”

Individual Strategies l l Search strategies varied by individual People who pile information take small steps People who file information take big steps Where was the last email you found? – – Inbox? Elsewhere?

File or Pile Email Filer Piler

How Individuals Search For Files Filers Big steps Pilers Small steps

Applying What We Learned Support orienteering l Advantages to orienteering – – – l Easier thansource, saying flag whatsources you want Meta-info, with info You where you are apparent, all steps URLknow manipulation, paths You know what you find sources, exhaustive Answer context, trusted Individual differences in step size – Allow for different step sizes

Structural Consistency Important All must be the same to re-find the information!

Preserve What User Remembers l l Supports orienteering for re-finding Allows access to new information

More to Learn from the Data Differences in finding v. re-finding l How organization relates to search l Importance of type (email, files and Web) l Looked at v. looked for Keep in mind population l

Questions? Teevan, J. , Alvarado, C. , Ackerman, M. S. and Karger, D. R. (2004). The Perfect Search Engine is Not Enough: A Study of Orienteering Behavior in Directed Search. To appear in Proceedings of CHI 2004. (Linked from http: //www. teevan. org)

Relating How and What l l l Specific General Document Other 47 19 41 Keyword 34 23 17 People only keyword search 39% of the time What people look for related to how they look Surprise: Orienteer to specific information

Relating How and Corpus Other Keyword l l l Email 59 Files 42 Web 19 06 10 64 Email and files: Almost never keyword searched Easy to associate information with document Web: Used keyword search much more often

Relating What and Corpus Specific General Document l l l Email 39 10 08 Files 7 7 35 Web 33 30 14 Email searches were primarily for specific information File searches were primarily for documents Web searches were more evenly distributed