IA Summit 09 - User Interfaces with Metasearch Capabilities

User Interface Issues with Metasearch IA Summit March 21, 2009

What is metasearch?

AKA “federated search”

“… simultaneous search of multiple online databases or web resources…” (Wikipedia)

Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009

Recent Studies

2 government agencies

Library of Congress (LOC)

Various historical databases, the LOC website, and the LOC card catalog

National Institutes of Health Library (NIHL)

Various medical research databases

1 professional organization

American Chemical Society (ACS)

Various chemistry journals, articles, and the ACS website

Methodologies

Similarities:

One-on-one usability test

User-defined and scenario-based tasks

Differences:

LOC – 20 participants, general public, prototype

NIHL – 14 participants, NIH employees & contractors, 3 metasearch interfaces – 1 prototype and 2 functional sites

ACS – 10 participants, chemistry professionals, functional site

Library of Congress Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009

NIH Library Site 1 Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009

NIH Library Site 2 (Science.gov) Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009

NIH Library Site 3 (Scitopia.org) Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009

American Chemical Society Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009

Results

Some metasearch-specific results and some general search interface results

Some commonalities and some differences

Metasearch takes time Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009 Waiting for a complete display of results is better than a quick response that displays only a partial set of results. -But be sure to justify to the user why it is taking a long time.

Use a progress indicator to show the user that a search is still ongoing.

Advanced Search within metasearch

Advanced Search is an important and desirable feature. Especially for sophisticated searchers.

Technical limitations:

Different metadata is used in each of the different sources

Offer an Advanced Search, even if only for individual sources. Make sure entry fields are intuitive.

These entry fields are not intuitive.

Do users care about the source of their results?

Users are more concerned with obtaining the answers that they need than the source of those answers (among the sources offered).

Exception: Some sophisticated searchers (e.g., frequent medical researchers at NIH) will want to choose what sources are included in the search.

Show users which sources will be searched by default and provide an option for them to modify the selection according to their preferences.

Interacting with results

Users like to be able to interact with their search results.

Searching within the results

Removing or adding sources to the search

Applying filters to the results

Give users control by providing options to narrow or expand the results in various ways.

Metasearch Filters Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009 Bad Good

How to offer faceted browsing of results

Functionality:

Include Topic, Author, and Date filters for each set of results

Allow users to remove a filter once it is selected

Allow users to select from more than one category (i.e., topic and date)

Metasearch Filters (cont.) Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009 Bad Good

Use clear navigation icons and visually defined hierarchies in filters.

How to display:

Show a clear hierarchy

Use consistent list icons at each level

Avoid use of ellipsis in topic labels

Avoid overuse of blue hyperlink text

General search interface findings

SEARCH TERMS

Users will:

Use descriptive search terms (“books about” or a specific journal name)

Misspell search terms

Use Boolean logic

Metasearch features should support common user inputs such as descriptive words and Boolean logic.

SEARCH TERMS

Users want (and expect):

A feature to check their spelling

A feature to support Boolean logic

If Google does it, users expect it from you, too.

RESULTS DISPLAY

Users will:

Assume that the “featured links” at the top of results list are advertisements and will skip over them

Skim results and skip items that don’t immediately look relevant

Users want:

Text extracts included for every result

Highlighted keywords

Results ranked by relevancy

Where differences occur

UNSOPHISTICATED SEARCHERS VS. SOPHISTICATED SEARCHERS

Unsophisticated searchers care about:

Quickly locating useful results

Sophisticated searchers care about:

What sources are being searched

Advanced Search options (because they’re used to using them)

Best practices for any search

Incorporate spell check and a thesaurus

Support Boolean logic

Include text extracts for all results

Highlight keywords in titles and text extracts

Best practices for metasearch

Display a progress indicator as results are being populated

Offer Advanced Search

Clearly display hierarchy in filters

Show sources that are being searched and allow users to be modify them

Consider the sophistication of your various audience groups when designing a search interface and as always, conduct user testing throughout the design process.

Future Research

Personalization (i.e., save search terms, save results, export results)

RSS feeds of new content related to a search

Geo-proximity as a sorting option

How to search multimedia databases

How long users are willing to wait for results

The best way to implement Advanced Search

Questions? Dana Douglas, Dick Horst, Cory Lebson / User Interface Issues with Metasearch / IA Summit 2009 UserWorks, Inc. 1738 Elton Rd Suite 138 Silver Spring, MD 20903 301-431-0500 www.userworks.com