July 9, 2007: Usability of search: research?


Avi Rappoport, search guru, maintainer of SearchTools.com, [1] and Friend of
Lou, asks:

"I'm putting together a talk on "Good Practices for Search UI" for the
Enterprise Search Summit West [2] (November 6-7 in San Jose), and am having
a hard time finding any actual search usability research. Have you done any
work on the topic lately? Do you know who might be in this field and
available to participate?

"I'm looking for really practical work, such as whether users get
disconcerted by very large results numbers, how long the match words in
context should be, how to display zone-limited search and whether to revert
to universal search after a zone, how to display Search Suggestions (Best
Bets) separate from or included with organic search results, and so on."

It's a great question. Any ideas for Avi?


BLOUG PERMALINK & COMMENTS
http://louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/2007/07/usability_of_search_res
earch.html

LINKS
[1] http://searchtools.com/
[2] http://www.enterprisesearchsummit.com/