slides

Surviving the Information Explosion: 

Surviving the Information Explosion Jaime Teevan, MIT with Christine Alvarado, Mark Ackerman and David Karger

Let Me Interview You!: 

Let Me Interview You! Web: What’s the last Web page you visited? How did you get there? Have you looked for anything on the Web? Email: Files: What’s the last email you read? What did you do with it? Have you gone back to an email you’ve read before? What’s the last file you looked at? How did you get to it? Have you looked for a file?

Overview: 

Overview Introduction Related Work Study Methodology Results: Search Discussion Intro RW Study Res Disc

Overview: 

Overview Intro RW Study Res Disc Introduction Related Work Study Methodology Results: Search Discussion

The Information Explosion: 

The Information Explosion You must extract information from: 3 billion Web pages (Google) Dozens of incoming emails daily Hundreds of files on your personal computer Intro RW Study Res Disc

Haystack:Personal Information Storage: 

Haystack: Personal Information Storage Email Web pages Files Calendar Contacts Intro RW Study Res Disc

Haystack:Personal Information Storage: 

Haystack: Personal Information Storage What was that paper I read last week about Information Retrieval? Haystack Intro RW Study Res Disc

Haystack:Personal Information Storage: 

Haystack: Personal Information Storage Ah yes! Thank you. Haystack Intro RW Study Res Disc

Supporting Information Interaction: 

Supporting Information Interaction Treat different corpora the same? Provide access to meta-data? Keyword search (XP, advanced search) Browse (Hearst) Intro RW Study Res Disc We don’t really know …  Understand access in the wild!

Overview: 

Overview Intro RW Study Res Disc Introduction Related Work Study Methodology Results: Search Discussion Interaction by corpus How people search

Interaction By Corpus: 

Interaction By Corpus Paper documents [Malone, 1983], [Whittaker & Hirshberg, 2001] Files [Barreau & Nardi, 1995] Web [Abrams, et al. 1998], [Byrne, et al. 1999] Email/Calendar [Whittaker & Snider, 1996], [Bellotti & Smith, 2000] Intro RW Study Res Disc

How People Look for Information: 

How People Look for Information Focus: Web Log analysis [Catledge & Pitkow, 95], [Tauscher & Greenberg 97] Controlled tasks/environment [Baldonado & Winograd, 1997], [Spool, 1998] Situated navigation Micronesian islanders [Suchman, 1987] Electronic [Marchionini, 1995], [Hearst, 2000] Information scent [Chi, Pirolli, Chen & Pitkow, 2001] Intro RW Study Res Disc

Overview: 

Overview Intro RW Study Res Disc Introduction Related Work Study Methodology Results: Search Discussion

Method: 

Method Subjects 15 MIT CS graduate students (5 women, 10 men) Setup 10 short interviews (~ 5 min.) 1 long interview (~ 45 min.) Topics Web, Email, Files Intro RW Study Res Disc

Short Interviews: 

Short Interviews Modified diary study [Palen, 2002] Randomly interrupted participant Two question types Last email/file/Web page looked at Last email/file/Web page looked for Goal: Discover patterns in searching and browsing Intro RW Study Res Disc

Long Interviews: 

Long Interviews “Guided tour” of subject’s Web space, email, and file system Goals: Discover organizational patterns Discover problems in organizational structure Relate organization to search/browse behavior Intro RW Study Res Disc

Overview: 

Overview Intro RW Study Res Disc Introduction Related Work Study Methodology Results: Search Discussion What and how Relating what and how Individual strategies

Complex Information Spaces: 

Complex Information Spaces People had complex spaces Felt in control Intro RW Study Res Disc “That’s an interesting question. I think my email is the worst, because I have so much of it. And there are people on the other end who expect me to reply to it. My file system is pretty well organized. I have to go through it every once in a while, every couple of months and just kind of push things into the right folders and delete the old stuff. The Web just works, usually.”

What People Look For: 

What People Look For Specific Information A small fact E.g., URL, phone number, appointment time General Information A broad set of information E.g., good sneakers to buy, info on cancer Specific Document The actual document E.g., a file to print, an email to reply to Intro RW Study Res Disc

How People Look For Information: 

How People Look For Information The last thing you looked for on the Web Intro RW Study Res Disc Search is more than just keyword search Did you use a search engine? Browse, use bookmarks, type URLs “I was looking to figure out where Glaris was. When I lived in Switzerland there were only a few reasonable mapping places of the country. And so I had bookmarked [the Switzerland map site].”

Strategies Looking for Information: 

Traditional search Jump directly to target Specify everything up front Strategies Looking for Information Intro RW Study Res Disc Teleporting Orienteering Use local navigation [O’Day and Jeffries, 1993] Could include keyword search

Example: Orienteering: 

Example: Orienteering […] J: I knew that she had a very small Web page saying, “I’m here at Harvard. Here’s my contact information.” Intro RW Study Res Disc Interviewer: Have you looked for anything on the Web today? Jim: I had to look for the office number of the Harvard professor. […] I: So you went to the Math department, and then what did you do over there? J: It had a place where you can find people and I went to that page and they had a dropdown list of visiting faculty, and so I went to that link and I looked for her name and there it was. I: So how did you go about doing that? J: I went to the homepage of the Math department at Harvard

Example: Teleporting: 

Example: Teleporting What if Jim had teleported instead?  Could have typed into a search engine: “Connie Monroe, office number” Intro RW Study Res Disc

“Keyword Search” and “Browse”: 

“Keyword Search” and “Browse” “Keyword Search” and “Browse” “Keyword Search” and “Browse” “Keyword Search” “Keyword Search” Traditional search Jump directly to target Specify everything up front “Keyword Search” and “Browse” Intro RW Study Res Disc Teleporting Orienteering Use local navigation [O’Day and Jeffries, 1993] Could include keyword search Teleporting Orienteering

Relating How and What: 

Orienteer to specific information Relating How and What People orienteer a lot What people look for related to how they look Intro RW Study Res Disc Surprise:

Why So Much Orienteering?: 

Did you know what email contained that information? Why So Much Orienteering? Your last email search Intro RW Study Res Disc People look for the information source Specific information searches  Document searches What were you looking for?

Looking for the Source: Example: 

Looking for the Source: Example “I was looking to figure out where Glaris was. When I lived in Switzerland there were only a few reasonable mapping places of the country. And so I had bookmarked [the Switzerland map site].” Intro RW Study Res Disc

Looking for the Source: Example: 

Looking for the Source: Example Interviewer: Have you looked for anything on the Web today? Jim: I had to look for the office number of the Harvard professor. I: So how did you go about doing that? J: I went to the homepage of the Math department at Harvard […] J: I knew that she had a very small Web page saying, “I’m here at Harvard. Here’s my contact information. […] I: So you went to the Math department, and then what did you do over there? J: It had a place where you can find people and I went to that page and they had a dropdown list of visiting faculty, and so I went to that link and I looked for her name and there it was. Intro RW Study Res Disc

Individual Strategies: 

Individual Strategies Search strategies varied by individual Pilers: Pile information Filers: File information Intro RW Study Res Disc Where was the last email you found? Inbox? Elsewhere?

File or Pile Email: 

File or Pile Email Intro RW Study Res Disc Filer Piler

How Individuals Search For Files: 

How Individuals Search For Files Intro RW Study Res Disc Filers Pilers Teleport Orienteer

Overview: 

Overview Intro RW Study Res Disc Introduction Related Work Study Methodology Results Discussion Understanding and applying what we learn Future work

UnderstandingTeleporting v. Orienteering: 

Understanding Teleporting v. Orienteering Why was orienteering chosen over teleporting? Teleporting doesn’t work Teleporting requires too much cognitive effort Risk of over-specifying target Orienteering gives knowledge of the source Teleporting a failure mode Can’t associate information with source Can’t find the information source Intro RW Study Res Disc

Understanding Filers v. Pilers: 

Understanding Filers v. Pilers Why do filers teleport more than pilers? Irony: Those with good organization don’t take advantage of it Filers have strictly organized information  Are used to defining meta-data for their information Pilers loosely organize their information  Are used to associative navigating Intro RW Study Res Disc

Haystack: Applying What We Learn: 

Haystack: Applying What We Learn Using meta-data: Support orienteering Not about having the perfect search interface Need ability to prompt Individualized support Pilers/filers Learning individual behaviors Intro RW Study Res Disc

Future Work: Search: 

Future Work: Search Previously viewed information Causes of failure Searches across corpus Getting help from others Intro RW Study Res Disc

Future Work: Organization: 

Future Work: Organization Consistency of organization across corpus Corpora boundaries Context used in organization Organization’s effect on search Intro RW Study Res Disc

Conclusion: 

Conclusion Look at search in the wild Strategies: Teleport/Orienteer Individual strategies Future systems should: Support orienteering Provide individualized support

Questions?: 

Questions? To learn more about Haystack: http://haystack.lcs.mit.edu Contact us with comments: - teevan@ai.mit.edu - calvarad@ai.mit.edu

Relating How and Corpus: 

Relating How and Corpus Email and files: Almost always orienteered Easy to associate information with document Web: Teleported much more often Intro RW Study Res Disc

Relating What and Corpus: 

Relating What and Corpus Email searches were primarily for specific information File searches were primarily for documents Web searches were more evenly distributed Intro RW Study Res Disc