Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

October 18, 2012

Designing for Consumer Search Behaviour (slideshow)

Filed under: Interface Research/Design,Search Behavior,Users — Patrick Durusau @ 10:40 am

Designing for Consumer Search Behaviour (slideshow) by Tony Russell-Rose.

From the post:

Here are the slides from the talk I gave recently at HCIR 2012 on Designing for Consumer Search Behaviour. This presentation is the counterpart to the previous one: while A Model of Consumer Search Behaviour introduced the model and described the analytic work that led to it, this talk looks at the practical design implications. In particular, it addresses the observation that although the information retrieval community is blessed with an abundance of analytic models, only a tiny fraction of these make any impression at all on mainstream UX design practice.

Why is this? In part, this may be simply a reflection of imperfect channels of communication between the respective communities. However, I suspect it may also be a by-product of the way researchers are incentivized: with career progression based almost exclusively on citations in peer-reviewed academic journals, it is hard to see what motivation may be left to encourage adoption by other communities such as design practitioners. Yet from a wider perspective, it is precisely this cross-fertilisation that can make the difference between an idea gathering the dust of citations within a closed community and actually having an impact on the mainstream search experiences that we as consumers all encounter.

I have encounter the “cross-community” question before. A major academic organization where I was employed and a non-profit in the field shared members. For more than a century.

They had no projects in common all that time. Knew about each other, but kept waiting for the “other” one to call first. Eventually did have a project or two together but members of communities tend to stay in those communities.

It is a question of a member’s “comfort” zone. How will members of other community react? Will they be accepting? Judgemental? Once you know, hard to go back to ignorance. Best just to stay at home. Imagine what it would be like “over there.” Less risky.

You might find members of other communities have the same hopes, fears, dreams that you do. Then what? Had to diss others when it means dissing yourself.

A cross-over UX design practitioner/researcher poster day, with lots of finger food, tables for ad hoc conversations/demos, would be a nice way to break the ice between the two communities?

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