In a recent blog post, Vegard Sandvold proposed a taxonomy of search systems based on two dimensions — algorithmic vs. user-powered and information accessibility. The first dimension represents a tradeoff between systems and people in terms of who does the information seeking, and the second one measures the ease of finding information in some search space. His blog post was intended to solicit discussion, and, in that spirit, here is my take on his ideas.
Last week I blogged about Google’s public data visualizations, and suggested that the data lacked transparency that prevented Google’s visualizations from being used critically. Daniel Tunkelang pointed out that the source of the data is linked to the visualization. And indeed it is. So what’s the problem?
One of my co-workers is crazy. Well, possibly more than one, but I will start with one. His nuttiness manifests itself in many ways, most notable among which is his propensity to run long races. I am not talking about 10k races or marathons here. I mean 50, 100, or more mile runs. Uphill. Both ways.
As I write, Tony is running a relay race. The 199 mile route goes from Calistoga to Santa Cruz and consists of 12 stages. Of course Tony is running it by himself. (He got a bit of a head start from the race officials.) You can track his progress here, and read a SFGate piece on his obsession here.
Usually these kinds of runs are accompanied by some adventures or misadventures. There was the time that runners got chased — and stung — by a swarm of bees. There was the runners’ aid station in Paris serving wine instead of water. What will happen this time? Flash floods in Napa? Irate drivers in San Francisco? Driving rain in Daly city? Crazed surfers on the way to Santa Cruz? Stay tuned.
The 2009 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2009) will be held in Austin, TX June 15-19. The program includes tutorials, workshops, and three days of paper presentations. The schedule is just being made available online, and I found some interesting papers worth watching for when they appear in the ACM DL or on the authors’ pages. Here are some of the papers I am looking forward to when I go to the conference:
Google recently unveiled its public data search that allows people to generate charts of data from public sources. Nifty. But it doesn’t seem to allow the user to customize the visualization by selecting representations, date ranges, etc., or for data to be extracted for further analysis. It would be great if I could run my own statistical analyses on the data, or generate visualizations with, for example, Many Eyes.
Another problem I see with the data is lack of transparency: I couldn’t see any way to browse the various datasets they have indexed. Instead, it seems that you have to stumble onto them by chance. Nice for serendipity, not so nice for exploratory search.
I saw an interesting bit of technology at CHI 2009 this year. Yevgeniy Medynskiy, Mira Dontcheva, and Steven Drucker published a paper called “Exploring Websites through Contextual Facets” where they tried to solve the problem of iterative query formulation in online faceted search. They observed that search interfaces that allowed the user to specify multiple criteria to find desired objects often removed the search interface when the user selected item details. In addition, they observed vocabulary mismatch for aspects in the search interface vs. the details view. Finally, people often landed on item pages through external search engines, and couldn’t easily get to an in-site search interface with their search context preserved.
A paper presented at CHI 2009 described strategies and processes used by intelligence analysts. Among other aspects, the paper discusses collaboration among analysts, quoting one of their participants:
What I will not trust and put into my analysis is somebody else’s analysis. I need to know the source of the information and build on that so that I can put my level of trust in it and then it’s my name at stake when I provide an answer… I won’t trust their analysis until I look at the source of the information, and it will be, “Do I agree with the conclusions that they came to based on the facts and the evidence?”
Pattie Maes from the MIT Media lab gave a TED talk this year about technology developed by one of her students, Pranav Mistry. The basic idea is that a person wears a device around the neck consisting of a camera, a projector, a small computer, all with wireless (cell phone) connectivity to the network. She argues that by augmenting our perceptions with information can give us a “sixth sense” that will help us lead more productive and fulfilling lives.
I am about to start a significant research and writing activity with a co-worker. We will have to organize a bunch of documents, take and share notes, do some searching, etc. The tool should allow us to group and organize notes associated with each document, and perhaps generate some overviews of the collection.
I am looking for recommendations, including pros and cons. We would consider spending a bit of money on this, but obviously free is better. On the other hand, a well-designed, usable interface is worth some investment. Also, I would prefer simplicity to functionality.
The area of collaborative search has experienced significant growth over the past couple of years in the number of research groups interested in the topic, and in the number of research papers being published in proceedings of respected conferences.
Interestingly, there is also a rash of “best paper” awards for this work. In chronological order of publication, the following papers related to collaborative search have received “best paper” designations.
Congratulations to all the authors, and please let me know if I forgot to list your paper!