The 5 W’s of Collaborative Search Jaime Teevan and Merrie Morris Microsoft Research

Who, What, Where, When & Why? Who does collaborative searches? What are collaborative search tasks? Where are the collaborators located? When does the collaboration occur? Why do people collaborate? How can we support collaborative search? Understand Frame

Who Does Collaborative Searches? Everyone! – More than 50% report collaborating for search – People rely on others even for individual search Consider type of relationship Privacy considerations – Friends v. strangers – Kids v. adults

What Are Collaborative Search Tasks? Tend to be involved tasks (v. directed search) Some popular tasks: – Travel planning – Shopping – Technical information/literature Important: Important task be related to group – Work groups get benefit for work tasks – Social groups get benefit for social tasks

Type 2 Diabetes Complications - American Diabetes Association Many of the complications of diabetes are strongly related to high blood sugar levels. It is believed that keeping your blood sugar levels in your target range is your best defense... Where Are the Collaborators Located? Co-located – Ability to share control – Ability to partition task: Smart Splitting Remote – Awareness of others important Type 2 Diabetes Complications - American Diabetes Association Many of the complications of diabetes are strongly related to high blood sugar levels. It is believed that keeping your blood sugar levels in your target range is your best defense...

When Does the Collaboration Occur? Synchronous – Communication important – Support different roles Asynchronous – Need to preserve and expose state – Hard to identify future value of information – Can “collaborate” with future self

Why Do People Collaborate? Group identification – Explicit – Implicit Group longevity – Task-based – Trait-based Task-basedTrait-based Longevity Identification ImplicitExplicit Task Age Gender Job team Job role Location Interest group Relevance judgments Query selection Friends

How Can We Support Collaboration? Group identification – Match people into groups – Match task to appropriate group Algorithmic support for collaborative search – Identify documents of interest to group – Partition information appropriately to members – Summarize documents based on group interests

How Can We Support Collaboration? Build a common evaluation framework – An example framework Individual profiles Grouping information Relevance judgments for common queries – We have used the framework to study Groupization Smart splitting Group hit highlighting

Collaborative Search M. R. Morris and Teevan, J. Collaborative Search: Designing for a Spectrum of Collaborative Styles. (Ed. G. Marchionini.) Morgan-Claypool Groupization Teevan, J., M. R. Morris and S. Bush. Discovering and Using Groups to Improve Personalized Search. WSDM Exploring Solutions Morris, M. R., J. Teevan and S. Bush. Enhancing Collaborative Web Search with Personalization: Groupization, Smart Splitting, and Group Hit- Highlighting. CSCW Group Types Morris, M. R. and J. Teevan. Understanding Groups' Properties as a Means of Improving Collaborative Search Systems. JCDL Workshop on Collaborative Information Retrieval Thank you. Jaime Teevan