Search Pages and Results INF 385E: Information Architecture and Design Yong Huang October 2006

Search What? All kinds of information: Business: company, product, service… Education: university, program, book… Daily life: apartment, restaurant… Entertainment: movie, music… …

Why Search? Direct access to the information we want Alternative way to gain information in addition to browse and navigation Compare the search results and choose a best one

Search Pages: Typical Layout Search box and “go” or “search” button Usually at the top area of the web page Some pages locate them in the center

Search Pages: Search Zone Some search pages allow users to search in a specific zone

Search Pages: Advanced Search Some search pages supply advanced search

Precision/Recall Precision: refers to the relevance of documents within a given result set Recall: refers to the proportion of relevant documents in the result set compared to all the relevant document in the system Inversely related: increase one at the expense of the other

Search Results: No Result Revise your search Try advanced search Read search tips Switch to Browsing Try another web page Next two should be pictures

Display Search Results Directly display the information you search for: dictionary, encyclopedia… List all the results that may contain the information you search

Google results page

List Search Results Ranking: helpful when there is a need to understand information or learn something. Describe the degree to which the result is relevant to what users want Sorting: helpful to users who are looking to make a decision

Sort the Search Results By alphabet, time, location, price… Amazon result page with sorting operations

Save search Results Save the web page Save the search Print Email Send to cell phone

Search and IA Need search? Choose search content Choose search algorithm Present search results Design search interface Rule of thumb: User!

Q&A

THANKS!