Collecting Community Wisdom: Integrating Social Search & Social Navigation Jill Freyne, Rosta Farzan, Peter Brusilovsky, Barry Smyth & Maurice Coyle University College Dublin & University of Pittsburgh

Motivations Information Overload Problem Potential in harnessing user activity patterns to drive social information access tools Independence of social systems Eurekster, Del.icio.us, Shadows, I-SPY, MySpace, ebay,…..

Information Overload Problem

Potential in harnessing user activity patterns to drive social information access tools

Independence of social systems

Eurekster, Del.icio.us, Shadows, I-SPY, MySpace, ebay,…..

Social Browsing Form of Social Navigation Visualizes usage paths in a digital environment KnowlegeSea II Brusilovsky et al. AH 2004 Information access system for class mates providing access to open corpus textbooks Supports information access through visualization, search, annotation and browsing

Form of Social Navigation

Visualizes usage paths in a digital environment

KnowlegeSea II Brusilovsky et al. AH 2004

Information access system for class mates providing access to open corpus textbooks

Supports information access through visualization, search, annotation and browsing

KnowlegeSea II Footprint based support Monitors students as they browse the collection Annotation based support Allows students to leave specific traces on parts of the system

Footprint based support

Monitors students as they browse the collection

Annotation based support

Allows students to leave specific traces on parts of the system

Social Search Collaborative Web search Communities of like minded users searching together I-SPY Smyth et al. UMUAI 2004 Social search engine where communities of searchers can benefit from each others wisdom in terms of search queries and result selections

Collaborative Web search

Communities of like minded users searching together

I-SPY Smyth et al. UMUAI 2004

Social search engine where communities of searchers can benefit from each others wisdom in terms of search queries and result selections

I-SPY Monitors users as they search Post Processing Engine Re-ranks result lists from underlying search engines to reflect community preferences

Monitors users as they search

Post Processing Engine

Re-ranks result lists from underlying search engines to reflect community preferences

ACM DL ACM DL - a vast collection of citations and full text from ACM journal and newsletter articles and conference proceedings . 2 access strategies Browsing – through archive lists, tables of contents Searching – basic and advanced search features

ACM DL - a vast collection of citations and full text from ACM journal and newsletter articles and conference proceedings .

2 access strategies

Browsing – through archive lists, tables of contents

Searching – basic and advanced search features

Searching

Browsing

Integrated Social Information Access “ Community Wisdom” collected by the search component should be used to support navigation in the browsing component and vice versa Social Search and Social Browsing should be seamlessly integrated at the interface level Social Support in the form of icons/cues

“ Community Wisdom” collected by the search component should be used to support navigation in the browsing component and vice versa

Social Search and Social Browsing should be seamlessly integrated at the interface level

Social Support in the form of icons/cues

Components Search Component I-SPY Search technology Re-rank CACM result-list and add search icons Browsing Component Knowledge Sea II social navigation technology Provide footprint and annotation support and add browse icons

Search Component

I-SPY Search technology

Re-rank CACM result-list and add search icons

Browsing Component

Knowledge Sea II social navigation technology

Provide footprint and annotation support and add browse icons

Search Component Architecture CWS ENGINE CACM SEARCH ENGINE q q` R M R H R T Hit Matrix q

Browse Component Architecture KNOWLEDGE SEA ENGINE Navigation (Browsing & Annotation) Records

Integration - Search CACM Search Engine Navigation Engine CWS Engine Hit Matrix Navigation (Browsing & Annotation) Records Result Set Re-ranked result With social search icons Re-ranked result With social search and social navigation icons Users start with search

Integration - Browsing Users start with browsing Navigation Engine CWS Engine Search Hit Matrix Navigation (Browsing & Annotation) Records Adding social search icons Adding social navigation icons Back to search Query based navigation

Annotations

Search Support Relevance: 100% Related Queries: Social Navigation Computational Wear Last Selection: 30 mins ago Last Browse: 1 day ago Last Annotation: 1 day ago Browse Popularity 30% Annotations: Relevant to previous work by Dourish and Chalmers in Social Navigation

Browsing Support Queries: personalization business customer adaptive web Browse Popularity : 5% Annotation: …………

Browse – Search Cycle

Evaluation Subjects: 30 students enrolled in “Introduction to Multimedia” course Task: Produce a literature review on the topic of “the social web” in 1 hour using the ACM social site Groups: Control group - no social support (15 users) Experimental Group - all social support enabled (15 users)

Subjects: 30 students enrolled in “Introduction to Multimedia” course

Task: Produce a literature review on the topic of “the social web” in 1 hour using the ACM social site

Groups:

Control group - no social support (15 users)

Experimental Group - all social support enabled (15 users)

Review Relevance 54 articles returned Each examined and assigned relevance score 22.4% relative increase in very relevant papers

54 articles returned

Each examined and assigned relevance score

22.4% relative increase in very relevant papers

Search and Browsing Effort Users in the control group had to do more work to return (less relevant) results. 1.26 1.56 Ave selected result page 7.0 12.53 # links browsed 2.37 2.33 Query length 9.13 13.2 # queries Exp Ctrl

Users in the control group had to do more work to return (less relevant) results.

So? By adding social support to the CACM DL users found relevant information faster and with less user effort

By adding social support to the CACM DL users found relevant information faster and with less user effort

Subjective Data Analysis Questionnaire Designed to capture user opinion on the system 70% of the exp group found social ACM system useful for task 40% of ctrl group reported the same

Questionnaire

Designed to capture user opinion on the system

70% of the exp group found social ACM system useful for task

40% of ctrl group reported the same

Searching

Browsing

Conclusions Different community-based information access technologies can be used in an integrated system to reinforce each other and provide unique added-value to the users Integration of both technologies was achieved through seamless connection from search to browsing and browsing to search

Different community-based information access technologies can be used in an integrated system to reinforce each other and provide unique added-value to the users

Integration of both technologies was achieved through seamless connection from search to browsing and browsing to search

Future work Larger user study Larger, longer term study Domain divergence Introduce social support to other domains Multimedia, other academic domains

Larger user study

Larger, longer term study

Domain divergence

Introduce social support to other domains

Multimedia, other academic domains

Collecting Community Wisdom: Integrating Social Search & Social Navigation Jill Freyne, Rosta Farzan, Peter Brusilovsky, Barry Smyth & Maurice Coyle University College Dublin & University of Pittsburgh

User Feedback All subjects noticed the social icons All subjects often/always drawn to icons Users reported that they found it easier to locate information on the ACM DL site with the icons than without.

All subjects noticed the social icons

All subjects often/always drawn to icons

Users reported that they found it easier to locate information on the ACM DL site with the icons than without.

Social Search Monitors users as they search, recording their queries and result selection pairs Uses past search interaction to re-rank the results of an underlying search engine to reflect the preferences of a community of searchers

Monitors users as they search, recording their queries and result selection pairs

Uses past search interaction to re-rank the results of an underlying search engine to reflect the preferences of a community of searchers

Search and Browsing Efforts 58% of users did not look beyond result page 1 88% did not look beyond result page 3

58% of users did not look beyond result page 1

88% did not look beyond result page 3