L19. USER INTERFACES FOR SEARCH AND INFORMATION RETRIEVAL (11/2)

2 November 2009

NOTE: we have combined two lectures to make room for the review lecture.

[Part1]

A person with an information need must first convert his internalized, abstract concepts into language, and then convert that expression of language into a query expression, which the search system then uses.  The user interface(s) to the IR system can't help at all with this first task and usually offers just a little help with the second (except for so-called "natural language" question answering systems, which really aren't).  Search UIs influence the kinds of queries that the user can express (or express easily).  It wasn't that long ago that information retrieval was carried out mostly by highly trained professionals, and the user interfaces for the systems they used were complex.  Today, web-based search is ubiquitous, and user interfaces must be vastly simpler.  Best practices in designs for user interfaces in query specification, presentation of results, and query reformulation have emerged from laboratory experiments and from continuous incremental modification-and-test cycles in deployed systems.

[Part2]

Two categories of design questions for search UIs are the kind of information the searcher supplies (a spectrum from full natural language sentences, to keywords and key phrases, to syntax-heavy command language-based queries) and the interface mechanism the user interacts with to supply this information (which include command line interfaces, graphical entry form-based interfaces, and interfaces for navigating links).  Once the system determines the results that satisfy the query, it presents some aspects of the matching documents, usually highlighting the query terms and providing some surrounding text to provide context.  Some systems arrange, cluster, or visualize the results to make it easier for the searcher to identify the most relevant results.

 

Download recorded lecture from http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i202/f09/files/202-20091102.mp3