{"id":245783,"date":"2008-06-04T06:00:21","date_gmt":"2008-06-04T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?p=245783"},"modified":"2016-07-20T07:34:39","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T14:34:39","slug":"group-seeking-information-searchtogether","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/group-seeking-information-searchtogether\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Your Group Seeking Information? SearchTogether!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rob Knies<\/em><\/p>\n

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That long-awaited vacation is almost here\u2014just you, your spouse, and your teenage son, all eager to embark on a leisurely adventure to sunny climes for some much-needed R&R.<\/p>\n

But your planning has not kept pace with your anticipation. There is work to be done: hotels to book, flights to schedule, activities to consider. You need to research and collaborate to reach a decision. Time is growing short, though. How will it all get done?<\/p>\n

Well, you could try SearchTogether (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, a research project from the Adaptive Systems and Interaction<\/a> group at Microsoft Research Redmond<\/a>. The team recently released a beta of SearchTogether, a free Internet Explorer plug-in<\/a> that enables groups of people to collaborate on Web searches.<\/p>\n

\u201cSearchTogether is part of a larger project about collaborative search,\u201d explains Meredith Ringel Morris<\/a>, a researcher spearheading the project. \u201cWe\u2019ve done surveys and interviews to learn more about situations in which people are collaborating on Web search, what types of tasks drive them to do this, and what their current practices are.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been developing and testing prototypes for a bunch of those scenarios, and SearchTogether is for the scenario we call remote collaboration, where each participant has access to a computer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Search, of course, has become ubiquitous for enabling users to find Web content, but existing search engines have been designed for use by an individual. Search interfaces don\u2019t support collaborative search. Collaborating on search generally means one person at a keyboard while another makes suggestions, or two people using instant messaging or a phone while each is viewing a Web browser. It can work, but it\u2019s not optimal.<\/p>\n

While using SearchTogether, though, users can collaborate locally or at different locations, working in tandem or at different times. As Morris notes, her research has demonstrated that the need to do so certainly exists.<\/p>\n

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\"Meredith

Meredith Ringel Morris<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe big surprise has been how much people are trying to collaborate on Web search, given that it\u2019s not currently supported,\u201d she says. \u201cIn my survey, I asked people straight out, \u2018Have you ever collaborated on a Web search?\u2019 Over 50 percent of people said they had, which I found very surprising. Another 10 or 11 percent said they wanted to, they\u2019d tried to, but they couldn\u2019t really do it successfully because the tools weren\u2019t right for it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cIf you asked people specific questions, like, \u2018Have you ever stood behind someone while they searched the Web and suggested keywords that they should try?\u2019 which I would consider an example of collaborating on search, nearly 90 percent of people said they had done specific things like that. People really want to do these collaborative behaviors. I think it\u2019s good to think of ways to help them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In actuality, Morris has found herself needing to perform such collaborative searches.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve experienced a lot of situations where I\u2019ve wanted to be able to work with other people when I was looking for things online,\u201d she says. \u201cFor example, when I joined Microsoft last year, and my husband and I were moving to the [Redmond] area, we were searching online for things like furniture for our new home or purchasing a car, and those were complicated searches. There were a lot of different queries we had to issue and Web pages we had to look at to make those decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were complex decisions that we both wanted to be involved in, and it was really difficult to do that. If I did some searching on my own\u2014let\u2019s say, for cars\u2014and he did some on his own, there was a lot of redundant work. We would each end up finding the same things. It was hard for me to know what he had already found. That was part of the inspiration for getting started on this project.\u201d<\/p>\n

SearchTogether is designed for just such scenarios, although it is hardly limited to them. A rich set of integrated tools, it focuses on active collaboration among a small group of acquaintances who are working toward a shared goal, whether that be planning travel, making purchases, planning social events, researching medical conditions, or working together on a joint project. The technology captures and shares the collaborators\u2019 combined knowledge, reduces duplicated effort, and removes the need to hover over somebody\u2019s shoulder to be effective.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to think not just about browsing,\u201d Morris says, \u201cbut about search as a first-class collaborative activity.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to try for yourself. You\u2019ll need a Windows Live ID (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>; if you don\u2019t already have one, it\u2019s fast and easy to obtain. The tool uses browser tabs, so you\u2019ll need Internet Explorer 7<\/a>, and you need to install the plug-in. From there, things are pretty intuitive, but a tutorial (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> exists to walk you through all the functionality. You can invite anybody in your Live Messenger (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> buddy list to collaborate, and, if need be, you\u2019ll want to add them to your buddy list before you get started.<\/p>\n

SearchTogether works both synchronously or asynchronously, meaning you can work together in real time, or you can work at different times and let the tool communicate the steps you have taken to your search partners.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could imagine a group of three people,\u201d Morris says, \u201cand two of us are online at the same time. We have a chat, an IM, about the task, and later, the third person logs in. It\u2019s nice that the chat transcript is preserved along with the search results, because when the third person logs in, he or she can catch up on what discussions other people in the group already have had. The third person comes up to speed and keeps working.\u201d<\/p>\n

SearchTogether, featured in a paper<\/a> presented in 2007 during the Association for Computing Machinery\u2019s 20th Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, offers users the ability to work in the search engine of their choice. A discussion forum is available to provide support and to accept suggestions.<\/p>\n

Morris has a background in research on collaboration. Her Ph.D. thesis at Stanford was on interfaces for table-top computers, similar to Microsoft Surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general,\u201d she recalls, \u201cI was working on software and interaction techniques that would help groups of people work collaboratively around these types of devices. Collaboration is something that I\u2019ve been very interested in. I moved from thinking about collaboration on tables to thinking about collaboration in a very different domain, which is fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

She got her first taste of the search domain in 2002, during an internship at Microsoft Research, working with Eric Horvitz<\/a>, principal researcher and research-area manger of the Adaptive Systems and Interaction group, and Susan Dumais<\/a>, a principal researcher in the same group.<\/p>\n

That experience came in handy when she started thinking about collaborative search. Previous research had identified a common activity, informational search, in which a user is seeking information rather than seeking a single target site. This, Morris deduced, is the sort of rich search task that would benefit from collaboration.<\/p>\n

In addition, earlier studies had observed that people frequently have to re-enter previously used queries to retrieve useful Web pages. That demonstrated the value of capturing search activity and making it available later for multiple users. And an examination of sense making\u2014processing, organizing, and analyzing information\u2014sparked thoughts of providing summary views of previous collaborative work, ratings and comments on discovered content, and the ability to discuss those discoveries via instant messaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re really trying,\u201d Morris says, \u201cto go beyond existing work on collaborative browsing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In scoping such a project, Morris and Horvitz identified three challenges to surmount in order to make SearchTogether useful:<\/p>\n