1. Search Pages and Results
INF 385E Information Architecture and DesignⅠ
Min Yao
October 11, 2005

2. Overview Why do we love search Locating Search Scoping Search
Query Entry
Retrieval Results
Query Refinement
Finishing Search

3. Why do we love search? Search lets users control their own destiny
Search is also users' escape hatch when they are stuck in navigation

4. Locating Search “the little box where I can type”
Top left, middle or right
Put the search tool in a consistent place

5. Scoping Search

6. Query Entry
Where to enter a query?(Multiple search boxes can be confusing.)
Is it easy to enter a query? (Boolean operator?)

7. Query Entry (cont)
Is the search box long enough to handle common query lengths?
The mean query length is slowly increasing, approaching three terms
Search log analysis
query builders?(spell-checking, stemming, natural language processing)

8. Retrieval Results
Elements of Results Page

10. Retrieval Results (cont)
Which content components to display?
Depend on users’ needs, which components are available

12. Retrieval Results (cont)
How to organize retrieval results?
Sorting: alphabet, chronology
Ranking: relevance, popularity, users’/experts’ ratings, pay-for-placement
Vaughan (2004) compared human rankings with those of Google, AltaVista and Teoma.
Clustering

14. Retrieval Results (cont)
Zero results?

15. Query Refinement Advanced search, refine search or revise search
Display the original search, make it easy to edit
Narrow search results, search within results
Expand search results

18. Finishing Search Save a group of results Print or email a result
Save a search query (alerts)