1. FINDING THE FLOW IN WEB SITE SEARCH.
- Author
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Hearst, Marti, Elliott, Ame, English, Jennifer, Sinha, Rashmi, Swearingen, Kirsten, and Ka-Ping Yee
- Subjects
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INTERNET searching , *WEB search engines , *DATABASE searching , *INFORMATION retrieval , *COMPUTER interfaces - Abstract
This article argues that designing a search system and interface may best be served and executed by scrutinizing usability studies. Unfortunately, most studies of search behavior are inconclusive about how to improve the system, but some consistencies do emerge about what works. This article summarizes which search features tend to work well, and which fail, in practice. Throughout this article, the assumption is that the user population consists of people who do not specialize in search and who have only basic knowledge of how to use computers. First and foremost, most users engaged in directed searchers are not interested in search for its own sake; thus systems that make users focus on the operations for performing search are seldom successful. Feature found to work well across studies are color highlighting of search terms in result listings; sorting of search results along criteria such as date and author; and grouping search results according to well-organized category labels. Certain features are helpful in principle, but only work in practice if the underlying algorithms are highly accurate and if the interface is carefully designed. Some examples of such features include spelling correction, automated term expansion, and simple relevance feedback, in which the user selects one item and the system shows items that are similar in scope along several dimensions.
- Published
- 2002
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