Designing Search for

HumansProf. Marti Hearst

UC Berkeley

Strata Conference 2012

searchuserinterfaces.com

Consider the Human Feelings

ConversingSociability

Shutterstock: http://www.faqs.org/photo-dict/phrase/3404/emoticons.html

FeelingsAesthetics

Emotional StagesFlow

5

Feelings: The Importance of Aesthetics With an aesthetically pleasing design:

People will enjoy working with it more People will persist searching longer People will choose it even if it is less

efficient

Nakarada-Kordic & Lobb, 2005, Ben-Basset et al. 2006, Parush et al. 1998, van der Heijden 2003

7

Feelings: The Importance of Aesthetics Small details matter

A left hand side line vs. a box for ads The line integrates the results into the page

Balancing white space with content Balancing font color, shape, and weight

Hotchkiss 2007

8

FeelingsKuhlthau on informational AND emotional stages in search

(Assuming novice researchers engaged in challenging tasks)

Uncertainty and apprehension

Optimism (after deciding)

Confusion, uncertainty, doubt, frustration

Confidence dawning *

Confidence growing

Relief and satisfaction (or disappointment)

Initiation

Selection

Exploration

Formulation

Collection

Presentation

9

Feelings: The Importance of Flow

10

Feelings: The Importance of Flow

From Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. HarperCollinsvia Bederson, Interfaces for staying in the flow, ACM Ubiquity 5(7), 2004

11

Properties of Interfaces with FlowInviting

Supports interrupt-free engagement in the taskNo blockages

Easy reversal of actions

Next steps seem to suggest themselves

Supplies guidanceTask-specific

Light weight

Conversing

People like to talk

13

Recent Trends Phone-based devices widely used

Naturally accepts spoken input Difficult to type on

Touch screen interaction increasingly popular Also difficult to type on

Speech recognition technology is improving Huge volumes of training data is now available

What are the impediments?

14

We need a “cone of silence”

15

Alternative text entry

swype.com Gesture search, Li 2010

16

Speaking leads to conversation People naturally prefer a give-and-take

Dialogue is getting closer with a combination of Massive behavioral data Intense machine learning research Advanced user interface design Real-time contextual information

17

: Dialogue

SIRI came out of the DARPA CALO project

18

Sociability

People are Social; Computers are Lonely. Don’t Personalize Search, Socialize it!

20

Social Search

Implicit: Suggestions generated as a side-effect of search activity.

Asking: Communicating directly with others.

Collaboration: Working with other people on a search task.

Explicit: knowledge accumulates via the actions of many.

21

22

Social Search: Asking for AnswersAsking experts in a social network

Richardson and White, WWW 2011

23

Social Search: People Collaborating

Pickens et al., SIGIR 2008

24

Social Search: People Collaborating

Jetter et al., CHI 2011

25

Summary: Consider the Human1. Feelings

Emotional responses to information seeking Aesthetics Flow

2. Conversing Audio and video are the future People prefer a natural dialogue

3. Sociability Search as a social and collaborative experience Turning to others for certain types of task Sharing information for next-generation knowledge management

Thank you!

Full text freely available at:http://searchuserinterfaces.com