Comments on: What is (not) Exploratory Search?

By: When Is Faceted Search Appropriate?

When Is Faceted Search Appropriate? — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 06:31:53 +0000

[...] search supports exploratory use cases, in contrast to known-item search. For known-item search, users are better served by a [...]

By: Exploring Explortatory Search | The Noisy Channel

Exploring Explortatory Search | The Noisy Channel — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:44:50 +0000

[...] term “exploratory search“. A while back, I tried to define exploratory search based on what it is not. This time, let me aim to positively characterize what I see as its two primary use [...]

By: Exploring Explortatory Search | The Noisy Channel

Exploring Explortatory Search | The Noisy Channel — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 13:44:50 +0000

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:47:00 +0000

Max, thanks for the link! A colleague at Endeca also pointed me back to the 2002 CACM paper by Marti Hearst et al., Finding the flow in web site search.

By: Max L. Wilson

Max L. Wilson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:56:00 +0000

daniel, you might be interested to read what CWI (Amsterdam) put into JCDL08: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1378889.1378897.

The report, really, showed that in the environment of museum curators, quick lookups were the minority case. they had an interesting breakdown of seeking types, but i think it was 63% that were information gathering tasks.

have an excellent workshop!

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:59:00 +0000

Pavel, I like that breakdown of exploration, and it addresses my frustration with people who consider “known item” search as the antitheses of exploratory search.

As for non-exploratory search looking like a database system, my only counter-reaction is that I think of databases primarily as relational databases. In a relational database, the biggest challenge is understanding the schema well enough to construct the right queries. But I’d agree with you in the context of a denormalized database.

By: Pavel Serdyukov

Pavel Serdyukov — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:54:00 +0000

If users know what and how to search something, then it more looks like a database system, doesn’t it? Users know that it is indexed and know the key. It is hardly exploratory, of course. It is interesting to divide exploratory search also into three kinds: one helps to “explore” personal memory (re-find things, recall names for things), second helps to explore how to name a known thing to find it (navigational), and third helps to really discover the world – find things with desired features, or change desires.