Search Mental Models and Interactions

Discover how user mental models relate to online search, particularly for more intensive knowledge work or critical information needs. This talk addresses the different types and stages of searching, similarities and differences in user mental models and the effect that may have on what tools and support should be available, and design solutions and patterns that have been employed to support the various search stages and users.

Download the UPA DC 2011 Conference Presentation

Duane Degler and Scott McDaniel presented a reprise of this talk for IxDC in 2012, with extended content and group activities.

Download the IxDA DC 2012 presentation

More insights

Duane Degler

Enabling Exploratory Discovery Through Taxonomy

Not everything can just be searched. “Aha!” moments deliver value. Exploration leads to insights and surfaces contexts. How do you prepare your content for these user experiences?
IA for AI: Shaping the Experience for Human-AI Systems

Participants collaborated in building upon the IA-for-AI framework that was first presented at IAC 2021. We explored what it means to understand, translate, and describe the types of situations where human-machine interaction occurs, and the way the relationship changes in real-time. Participants discussed opportunities and responsibilities that IA brings to human-AI relationships.
How IAs Can Shape the Future of Human-AI Collaboration

Sometimes people describe Artificial intelligence (AI) as an “emerging intelligence,” but it is, in truth, the emergent collaboration with humans that fosters positive personal, societal, and environmental outcomes. We outline a framework that Information Architects (IAs) can use to help them think about the key issues in designing for AI systems.
Sensemaking as a Learned Experience

Human ability to “make sense” in both sensory and information experiences is learned, then developed through attention and practice over time. This talk guides IAs, designers, and developers toward creating supportive environments for sensemaking. It outlines the role of language, symbols, structure, and tools that help us make sense of our interactions with information.
User and Information Design Considerations for Effective Semantic Search

Semantic search seeks to enhance the meaning in content, to more closely align the searcher and the available information resources. This means there is a strong user-centered aspect needed to unlock the benefits. In this NFAIS Conference presentation, Duane Degler explores strategies and considerations for best supporting your users through effective semantic search.
Going Global: The Intersection of IA and UX in a Multilingual Environment

In their IA Summit talk, Kate Blanch, Rachel Sengers, and Janette Shew discuss how to structure multilingual content to support its successful presentation and delivery, and how to provide innovative designs that facilitate exploration of that content.
Integrating Taxonomies and Ontologies into Enterprise Search and Browse

In this Data Harmony User Group 2018 session, Duane Degler outlines approaches for increasing taxonomy integration into search and browse, thus drawing the greatest value from your taxonomies for your users.
Guerrilla Glue: Making Collaborative Digital Innovation Projects Stick

In this MCN2017 session, Duane Degler moderates a panel discussing how institutions and projects are using linked data and modern technologies to achieve long-term outcomes for themselves and others.
Designing and Evaluating Powerful, Relevant Search and Browse Experiences

In this hands-on course, Duane Degler took participants on a journey through the evolving search landscape, with a particular focus on considerations for designing and evaluating the user experience.
Understanding How Content Is Used in Enterprise Settings

Enabling knowledge management capabilities through search and discovery can benefit from richer data to learn the ways users think about the information they find and use. This article describes an approach we developed to support enterprise search and content synthesis for case management and research in legal and scientific/academic domains. We use an extremely lightweight (yet powerful) mechanism to bridge the silos and establish a network of data around the use of information.
Intelligent Understanding of Content Use

Using a rich network of data about how people actually use content, we can find insights by integrating it with other enterprise information sources. In this article, Duane Degler explores how it becomes a valuable input to governance processes, at both the organizational and content levels.
8 Tips For Achieving User-Friendly Search

Search is an increasingly important component in desktop and mobile online experiences, yet too often search is not designed to meet the needs of users. Associations have unique challenges that come with serving multiple audiences and delivering a variety of information types through search—for example, balancing the relevance of publications, issue summaries, research papers, membership information, and event information. Here, we offer a practical to-do list to achieve user-friendly search for association websites and apps.
Designing the Next Generation of Search User Experience

Design is coming to the forefront of effective search applications, to help make sense of mobile search, data search, semantic search, enterprise search, federated search, and embedded search. So what do we need to know about designing for search? In this UXPA 2015 session, Duane Degler and Lisa Battle dive into the essentials for a new generation of search design.
Sewing the Seams of Sensemaking: A Practical Interface for Tagging and Organizing Saved Search Results

This paper presents a usability-tested interface design that enables time-constrained analysts to organize their search results in a lightweight manner during and immediately following their search sessions. The research literature suggests that users want to lay out search results spatially in overlapping “piles,” but a pilot study with a flexible canvas tool revealed that this design requires too much manipulation and has other drawbacks. This finding led to a novel hybrid design that combines structure with a flexible visual layout and which allows the analysts to quickly triage documents first and organize them later, or interweave these two processes.
Design Trends for Faceted Search

Faceted refinement and filtering is now a common part of search results interfaces, and faceted navigation is being used for many other types of interactions. At the same time, the underlying data on the web is changing (with increasing structured data, semantics, and use of more sophisticated categorization), as are the tool sets that can be used to implement facet interfaces “out of the box.” This talk addresses how the increasing availability of data and tools puts the focus even more firmly on the designer to make decisions that affect usability.
Semantics, Search, and Findability

Search is changing - we see it in public search and particularly what is possible with individual site searching. But it's more than search — findability is changing! Content relationships and linking, more structure and metadata, richer designs. Semantic Web concepts and techniques are becoming practical, finding their way into authoring tools and site designs. How do we take advantage of this? This is a brief overview of findability and search with a semantic twist, with examples and demos.
Layered, Adaptive Results: Interaction Concepts for Large, Heterogeneous Data Sets

Some data environments are not well served by current styles of search results presentation. One example of this is large-scale archival, library or museum collections. The range of user goals and interaction needs can be quite broad, and the information itself is highly structured yet very heterogeneous — it spans many subject areas, information types, and presentation/media. Based on the use of semantic web formats for metadata, in this paper we explore how to leverage the semantic relationships to drive aspects of results presentation — to change elements of the UI itself in response to the results data.