The Essentials of Great Search Design (ECIR 2010)
Enterprise search is a wicked problem – a problem that can’t be solved merely with clever algorithms, beautiful code and lots of data. You need a proper process for search user experience design when dealing with high ambitions, diverging goals, and tight budgets and deadline – not to forget about potentially weak corporate IT infrastructure, [...]
Remixing The Power of Ad-Hoc Personas
From UIE Brain Sparks: When you kick off a project right, everything is much easier. When that doesn’t happen, the team pays the price. We’ve all seen projects where, part way in, a well-intentioned executive derailed the team by changing the direction. To prevent this, we want to put everyone with the power to take [...]
Remixing Deep Dive Interviewing Secrets
Everybody knows that you should ask open and unbiased questions when interviewing users for UX research. The real skill to master for the seasoned researcher/designer is not so much that, but to know what kind of open question to ask, and when to ask them. Some questions may prove to be dead ends, and other [...]
I Love Search Information Architecture
At the heart of every great enterprise search user experience lies a clear and concise information architecture. Why – because search without structure is nothing but a disheartening solitary struggle to make sense of chaos. In order to implement a successful and sustainable search information architecture, you need to identify and design around relevant information [...]
3 Quick Design Patterns for Better Faceted Search
Facet design may seem like a trivial task at first. After all, it’s just a list of links representing a range of facet choices. By clicking on one choice after another users simply refine and narrow down the search results. Sort them by popularity (frequency) and show those neat hit counts on each facet choice, [...]
Mindless Recall Kills Faceted Search
Facets add value to the search user experience by helping users refine the usual ranked, best-first list of documents on a search page. The quality of faceted search, however, is at risk when search result precision is traded for recall. Users should ideally be able to find all documents relevant for a given query (high [...]
What Is Your Approach to Information Retrieval?
When working with search user experience, it’s often necessary to discover a suitable information strategy for an organization or business. An information strategy can potentially have a huge influence on how the search for information is facilitated. Are the users in question generally seeking precise answers to quick questions, or are they seeking to explore [...]
Wolfram Alpha – Re-Inventing the Command Line
The hype has passed, and it’s clear that Wolfram Alpha isn’t the new Google killer as initially anticipated. But what is this new computational knowledge engine, and how shall we use it? It seems to me that we have been given some sort of a command line tool for a comprehensive information database. The search [...]
Enterprise Search – Information Accessibility by Design or Technology?
You’re the user experience designer hired in to give shape to a new enterprise search solution. Your client has already decided upon a technology vendor, and has purchased a license. The responsibility now rests with you to provide employees or customers with the best possible information access. Will you design the solution around the assumption [...]
Mediating Information – What Does That Mean?
I’m very pleased with the discussions sparked by my last post about designing a topology of search concepts. Several people have raised questions about the 2 dimensions I selected as a way of characterizing search concepts in terms of business goals, user needs and technological capabilities. The post was intended to solicit discussion, and perhaps [...]
