developing a search & findability practice for the enterprise
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Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College
Developing a Search & Findability
Practice for the Enterprise
Ravi Mynampaty
Findability Program Manager
About me
A hustler making a living by pretending to
know more about search than he actually
does...
@ravimynampaty
http://www.usmansheikh.com/
Why the heck should I listen to Ravi?
One search (input) box to rule them all.
What I've been chasing...
What's this talk about?
Where did we come from?
Where are we going?
Religion
http://www.hfa.ucsb.edu/staff/wilcox/?page_id=950
10 Principles
5 Tools
What the heck is
Findability?
Search Patterns, Morville & Callender
Modified from Search Patterns, Morville & Callender
• Much of HBS web content not searchable
• Inconsistent location of search input box
• Plethora of search tools
• Many search dead ends
• Out of the box search engine
Circa 2005
2006
2006
Started with improvements to UI layer on Websites
2007
2007
• Started incorporating Intranet and protected
content
• Used three integration approaches:
o Blended Search
o Brokered Query
o Query Resubmit
2007
2008
2008
2008
• Have search engine do the heavy lifting
o Metadata injection in indexing pipeline
o Lightweight external metadata store
• Continuation of tactical, iterative approach
• Extend refiner option to 2nd-level of refiners
2008
2009
2009
Formalized 4 practice areas.
2010
2010
Developed Findability Standards
2010
Information
Management
Services (IMS)
2011/12
2011/2012
Rolled out standards
2011/2012
Rolled out standards
What have we learned?
Religion
http://www.hfa.ucsb.edu/staff/wilcox/?page_id=950
Fundamentalist
Incrementalism
Principles
Principle No. 0
Your search engine doesn't matter
(so much)
It's more about data and linkages between data
Principle No. 1
Top requirement for a search technology:
CONFIGURABILITY
Principle No. 2
关系
guanxi
Principle No. 3
根回し
nemawashi
Principle No. 4
Reach out to people who agree with you
Principle No. 5
Things users complain about will change
Principle No. 6
Be sure to grease the squeaky wheel
Principle No. 7
Do not fall into the "What if..." death spiral
Principle No. 8
Sometimes the stars will align just right
Principle No. 9
Search is sexy
5 Tools
zzpza: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zzpza/3269784239/
Tool No. 1:
Data Dictionary
(courtesy of Erin Wise)
• Identify content types (People,
Publications, Events, etc.)
• Identify data to be captured for each
content type based on:
o Content structure
o Functional requirements
o Display standards
• Identify data that should be
controlled, and provide controlled
vocabularies
Tool No. 1: Data Dictionary Capture data consistently to facilitate display, filtering, search.
Tool No. 1: Data Dictionary
Tool No. 2: Biz Owner Questionnaire
1. What is the overall business purpose
/objective of this UI?
2. What do you know of the current specific
behaviors of users of this UI?
3. What do you know of the desired specific
behaviors of users of this UI?
Tool No. 3: Findability Audit Template
1. Ensure XYZ content is searchable from the XYZ site
Place a search input box on all WES pages. This search box should ...
Current Status: Content already being indexed by the HBS search engine, but…
Process: HTML in the page header will need to be edited manually to add search box
Priority: High
Recommended Timeframe: Short-term
Estimated Effort: 3-5 days to implement
Dependencies: Enabling fielded search requires data enhancement
Tool No. 4: Baseline Analytics Reports • Reports to Track and Evaluate Search Keywords and
Quality of Search
o Search Keywords report
o Queries with No Results, No clicks
• Report to Understand from Where Visitors Are Coming
o Referrer report
o Referring Pages report
• Report to Determine from Where Visitors Begin a
Search: Pages on which Local Search Invoked report
• Reports to Determine Where Visitors Go from a Search
Results Page. Report for Click-through from SERP.
o Report for Query-Query Reformulation. The series of
keyword phrases that a user employs during a single
search session.
Tool No. 5: Clustering search logs
2013
http://opensourcedelivers.com/
2013
(Photo courtesy Paulina Wójciak)
2014
• Operationalize search analytics program
• Automated loop of analytics feeding
taxonomy and metadata improvements
• Implement Information Management
Infrastructure
• Integrate taxonomy/tagging w/search
• Role-based relevancy at the group level
• APIs
2015
• Formal user testing for search
• Role-based relevancy at the individual level
• Continue federation of available APIs
• Rationalize Search UIs
...and plenty more to come...
Remember...
Become a Fundamentalist Incrementalist
Thank you!
@ravimynampaty
http://www.slideshare.net/mynampaty/