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

IA Summit 09 - User Interfaces with Metasearch Capabilities

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