Pre-conference workshop

Improving the design of search

James Robertson

23/03/2007 (Friday). Half day (pm)

Organisations are now recognising that search is a critical business tool, on their intranet as well as on their websites. More than just a way to find documents or pages, search can directly support users completing their common tasks.

Fundamentally, however, this is not a technology problem. Modern search engines have more than enough functionality to deliver a workable search solution.

In practice, there is a key piece of design that must be done to create effective user interfaces, as well as to tune the search engine behind the scenes.

This workshop will explore in-depth how to improve the design and effectiveness of search, providing best (and worst) practice examples throughout. Key information architecture principles will be explored, including how ‘information scent’ can be used to guide the design of search results pages.

Topics covered during the workshop include:

• Key principles of effective search
• Nine step methodology for improving search
• Developing search personas
• Improving the search interface for general and specialist users
• Enhancing search results
• Search usage reports
• Search engine synonyms and ‘best bets’