BUT something happened between the end of April and the end of June. Yes, a day after I put the book online I was criticized for not mentioning Bing, which had only appeared on the face of the internet two weeks earlier! Of course I did have numerous mention of Microsoft’s search. (Actually, there was a Bing in my book, but it was an author’s name in the references.)

Last week I completed my final round of small edits, and even though it is against the rules, I’ve added a little reference to Bing, since I think the name will have staying power. It appears next to the first image from the old Microsoft search. This way searches on the name won’t come up empty.

I also added corrections to errors that readers of this column so kindly pointed out to me. All of the changes in the proofs are now reflected in the online version of the book, and I don’t expect it to change again after this.

I wish there was a bit more time before the final proofs are needed in case any of you kind readers find more errors. But that would delay production of the hardcopy book, so now things are frozen. Fortunately for the dead-tree version, Google is highly unlikely to rebrand itself any time soon.

However, usually when I tell people the title of the book, they look at me a bit blankly. This surprised me because everyone uses search on the web, although I guess they call it “googling” (a term I never use outside of scare quotes) rather than “searching” or “web searching” or “using web search engines”. (Ok, I admit “googling” is more concise and clear, but many of us were working on search before Google arose. And from my time at Xerox PARC I learned never to use the product name (”xerox”) to describe the process of using the product, less you destroy the trademark claims of your employer. So to this day I say “photocopy”, not that anyone xeroxes any more.)

Anyhow, I eventually came up with a better theory for why the book title throws people off. The phrase “search user interfaces” is a garden path noun compound.

What does that mean? Well, the only other time I’ve written blog posts was during a brief stint when I consulted for Powerset. While there I wrote a post called noun-noun compound is like a chocolate box in which I explained how my research group was working on programs to automatically interpret phrases that consist of a series of nouns. The key issue is how do the different nouns relate to one another semantically? For instance, a steel knife is a knife made of steel, while a butter knife is not a knife made of butter, but rather a knife used to spread butter. Some times it can be ambiguous: is a chocolate box a Gumpian box filled with chocolates, or a whimsical box made of chocolate? This is the kind of analysis our research tried to do.

The other relevant blog post I wrote was called search engines leaking oil for holes and discussed the linguistic phenomenon of garden path sentences. These sentences are confusing because the first few words make the reader assume they are going along one path, and then the next word switches the meaning in a new direction. So for a phrase like blog posts digest stories leads you, the reader, down the garden path by making you think it is talking about “blog posts” but then you expect a verb and see “digest” which isn’t really what blog posts typically do, in the eating sense. You have to back up one work and see that this is more of a headline, saying, this blog posted a digest of stories. Ok, a hokey example, but it illustrates the point. Same goes for “search engines leaking oil for holes”. The trick is that here the word “search” is used as a verb, but because you see the word “engines” right after it, and you’re used to reading about the noun compound “search engines”, you think that is what is being talked about, and then you get this weird picture of search engines leaking oil, which would be ok except for the “for holes” part. The sentence is really a command to auto mechanics to search any engines they encounter that are leaking oil to see if the cause is holes.

Ok, returning back to the original topic. I suspect that when people hear me say “search user interfaces” they think I’m telling them to do a security check of their computer screen. I made the title into a garden path noun compound.

This blog is a companion for my new book, which I am making available online today.

My intended audience is  practitioners and researchers who spend a lot of time thinking about user interfaces for search engines, or who want to bone up on the field.

In this book I try to stick to the evidence. My intention is for all claims to be backed up by usability studies, log studies, or some other form of proof, unless otherwise noted.

Ten years ago when I wrote the first chapter on search interfaces for the textbook Modern Information Retrieval, little was known about what works from a usability perspective and what does not.  Although we as a community still have more questions than answers, there now is enough known to fill a book.

In putting this information into a book there is a danger of rapid obsolescence. Search is a fast-paced field and many examples will soon become out of date.   I hope that despite this,  much of what I wrote is fundamental and will stand the test of time.

Even so, it is important to update the text with discussions of new developments and how they relate to what has come before, and that is what this blog is for.

And of course I want to hear from search aficionados about what you think about these developments!  And what you think about the contents of the book.   I hope you’ll join the conversation! ]]> http://www.searchuserinterfaces.com/blog/2009/06/launching-search-user-interfaces/feed/ 10