Archive for April, 2004

Metadata based search and browse functionality on the NSW Office of Fair Trading intranet: a Case Study

http://www.oict.nsw.gov.au/content/6.1.1.22.OFTINT.asp

interesting notes from the case study

An authority list is a list of the terms that can be used to populate a given metadata element

The simple search executes a search across the ’subject’, ‘title’ and ‘description’ metadata fields as well as the text of HTML pages and attachments. If the search term has a synonymous term within the corporate thesaurus then this term will also be searched.

Monitoring user searching and browsing success
Search reports are generated daily and cumulated on a monthly basis. These reports show the number of searches performed, the most popular search terms, search terms which resulted in success and those which resulted in failure. To date we only have reliable data for the last three months and are still looking at how to interpret these reports and how we can use them to develop intranet content and improve search functions.

interesting notes from the conclusion

Assigning metadata centrally, rather than decentralising the process, was the correct decision. It became obvious to us that two people assigning metadata frequently results in higher quality metadata than many people assigning metadata infrequently. The usefulness of the search and browsing functions depends totally on good metadata content, so no matter how good our standards and tools are, without proficient metadata assigners the project would have failed.

interesting notes from external resources

The guiding principle for using qualifiers with AGLS elements, colloquially known
as the ?dumb-down rule?, is that a client (eg a person or software) should be able to
ignore any qualifier and use the description (element content) as if it were
unqualified. The remaining element value without the qualifier should continue to
be generally correct and useful for discovery and other management purposes.
from http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/AGLS_reference_description.pdf

Jodi Forlizzi hosts a helpful and insightful overview titled Towards a Framework of Interaction and Experience As It Relates to Product Design -
Theories to Talk About.

In it, the work of Alben, Battarbee, Cain, Dewey, Forlizzi, Hudspith, Jaasko and Mattelmaki, Makela and Fulton Suri, Margolin, Pine & Gilmore, Rhea are summarized and contrasted. Diagrams of relevant models accompany easy review.

The 2200 words make it a longer-than-average page; any shorter, and the 11 Theories wouldn’t get there due.

Cheers to http://superfluousbanter.org/

Over on the Sensible Internet Design Journal site, there’s an interesting post titled “In search of … search customer experience. Here are my pull quotes:

These huge Internet players agree that customer experience will be the key differentiator on which they stake their businesses once they’re all pointing their searches to like data.

now, 10 years into this whole Web thing, consumer expectations run so low…

The search engines are promoting bad results in absence of good ones.

While there has been lots and lots of press on Gmail, consumer watchdogs have started attacking it as a creepy invasion of privacy that threatens to set a troubling precedent.

Below is my standard assortment of quotes pulled from the article, but I wanted to start by quoting the last line in the story: “Rosing said there will be an information firewall separating Google’s search engine from Gmail. “We don’t use the data collected on one service,” he said, “to enhance another.”

Can that really be true? For how long? I think they must mean that they don’t use a certain type of information for a certain type of use — but it seems obvious that they must be using the information. Why else? When does an “network integration” breach an “information firewall” ??

On to the array of quotes:

Privacy activists worry Gmail will comb through e-mail more intensively than the filters widely used to weed out potential viruses and spam.

opponents also want Google to revise a policy that entitles the company to retain copies of people’s incoming and outgoing e-mail even after they close their accounts.

“We are not going over to the dark side,” said Wayne Rosing, Google’s vice president of engineering. “Consumers can expect us to treat their e-mail as private and with a great deal of respect. I don’t think we are doing anything unreasonable.”

“We don’t see this as any different than letting a company listen in on your phone conversations and letting the Postal Service open your mail.”

After going to the CHI Conference in Vienna in a few weeks, Aimee and I will be extending our trip a week, spending the time in Italy. The plan is to spend a few days in Florence, a night in the Tuscany countryside, and then 3 days in rome.

To keep it in one place, I’ve posted all the relevant information below:

Florence:
Bellevue House
(review)

Tuscany:
La Crociona
(Review and another review)

Rome:
Lancelot Hotel
(Review, another)

Overall info:
Planning Info & Instructions for visitors, including language stuff (phrases and words)

Anybody have suggestions or input? Would love to learn even more local and must-see things to do.

(btw, I have a wonderful partner-in-crime who compiled this great plan and thorough research!)

My brother is a writer at The Onion. They just released this yahoo-related story today, seen on the homepage and directly. It has some good quotes:

using the user-friendly interface already familiar to Yahoo fans.

Early reviews from consumers have been overwhelmingly positive.

linked to the pre-existing Yahoo network—instantly leading the soul-searcher to pertinent information on HotJobs, Yahoo! Shopping, and Yahoo! Travel—making it possible for users to reconfigure their entire lives with one easy soul search

Yahoo is developing a search engine which will allow its estimated 300 million users to find their one true soulmate.