Incorporating Metadata into Search
User Interfaces
Marti Hearst
Ame Elliott
Ping Yee
Rashmi Sinha
Jen English
Kirsten Swearington
UC Berkeley http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/flamenco.html

Main Ideas
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Search is changing:
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More emphasis on flexibly showing next choices
Less emphasis on ranking
Web design is changing:
 More emphasis on dynamically determined views
 Less emphasis on pre-determined links
Two key ideas:
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Task-specific design
Harnessing the power of metadata

A Taxonomy of WebSites
Complexity of Data high
Catalog Sites
Web-based
Information
Systems low
Web-Presence
Sites
Service-
Oriented Sites
From Mecca et al.,
WebDB’99 low high
Complexity of Applications

An Important Trend
 Web sites generated from databases
 Implications:
 Web sites can adapt to user actions
 Web sites can be instrumented

Navigation on the Web
 Web search engines are good at getting people to the right site.

But … what happens when the user reaches the site?
Follow Links
… or …
Search

Following Hyperlinks
 Works great when it is clear where to go next
 Frustrating when the desired directions are undetectable or unavailable
Site Search
 Is not getting good reviews

An Analogy hypertext text search

Goal: An All-Tertrain Vehicle
 The best of both techniques
 A vehicle that magically lays down track to suggest choices of where you want to go next based on what you’ve done so far and what you are trying to do
 The tracks follow the lay of the land and go everywhere, but cross over the crevasses
 The tracks allow you to back up easily

New interfaces are mixing and matching thesaurus-style metadata
GeoRegion
+
Time/Date
+
Topic
+
Role
The question: how to do this effectively?

Goals for Metadata Usage
 Well-integrated with search
 Provides useful hints of where to go next
 Tailored to task as it develops
 Personalized
 Dynamic

The FLAMENCO Project
FLexible Access using MEtadata in Novel Combinations


Main goal:
 Perform systematic studies to determine how metadata should be incorporated into search
Answer questions such as:
 Given a set of user goals and a set of information:


How many metadata combinations to show?
What level of detail to show?
 How best to preview and postview choices?

Evaluation Methodology
 Regression Test
 Select a set of tasks
 Use these throughout the evaluation
 Start with a baseline system
 Evaluate using the test tasks
 Add a feature
 Evaluation again
 Compare to baseline
 Only retain those changes that improve results

Recipe Example

soar.berkeley.edu/recipes

soar.berkeley.edu/recipes

soar.berkeley.edu/recipes

www.epicurious.com

www.epicurious.com

www.epicurious.com

www.epicurious.com

Epicurious Metadata Usage
 Advantages
 Creates combinations of metadata on the fly
 Different metadata choices show the same information in different ways
 Previews show how many recipes will result
 Easy to back up
 Supports several task types
 ``Help me find a summer pasta,'' (ingredient type with event type),
 ``How can I use an avocado in a salad?'' (ingredient type with dish type),
 ``How can I bake sea-bass'' (preparation type and ingredient type)

Metadata usage in Epicurious
Ingredient Dish Cuisine Prepare
Recipe

Metadata usage in Epicurious
Ingredient
I
Select
Dish
Dish
Cuisine
Cuisine
Prepare
Prepare

Metadata usage in Epicurious
Ingredient Dish
I > Dish
Group by
Cuisine
Cuisine
Prepare
Prepare

Metadata usage in Epicurious
Ingredient Dish
I > Dish
Cuisine Prepare
Cuisine
Group by
Prepare

Metadata usage in Epicurious
Ingredient Dish Cuisine Prepare
I > Dish
I
Cuisine
Select
Cuisine
Group by
Prepare
Prepare

Metadata Usage in Epicurious
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Can choose category types in any order
But categories never more than one level deep
And can never use more than one instance of a category
 Even though items may be assigned more than one of each category type
Items (recipes) are dead-ends

Don’t link to “more like this”
Not fully integrated with search

Epicurious Metadata Usage
Problem: lacks integration with search

“Parametric” Search
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From an XML glossary
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"A search request submitted to a search or database engine delivered with consideration for the metadata of the underlying dataset.” www.sla.org/chapter/ctor/courier/v37/v37n1.pdf
A survey of sites using parametric search:
 http://www.amp.com/search/default.asp (see product family search)
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 http://ebiz.zilog.com/ http://www.sears.com (Dieselpoint) http://dieselpoint.com/flashlink.htm (for Dieselpoint 2.0 demo) http://www.findmro.com (Requisite's BugsEye) http://www.cypress.com (Saqqara's one step) http://infineon-tech.sacosnet.de/search/index.htm
http://www.idt.com/tools/parametric.html
http://www.ti.com/sc/docs/psheets/parms/uarts.htm#parms http://www.gensemi.com/search/productsearch.htm
http://www.usa.samsungsemi.com/search/ http://www.gearfinder.com
http://www.mysimon.com/category/index.jhtml?c=babydiaperingbathing

“Parametric” Search Sites


Goal is to focus on product group for comparison shopping.
Common Procedure
 Begin with a list of product "families" or groups.

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User selects a category, and is prompted to


1) select a sub-category from a list of hyperlinks or
2) select search parameters using a form
If the number of results is too big, the system may prompt the user to refine the search further.
When an acceptable number of results is returned, the user sees a list of products which can be:
 1) sorted by various criteria


2) selected for display in a comparison table
3) viewed individually with more detail.

“Parametric” Search
 Observations:
 Only one facet (appropriate for products?)
 No query previews
 Breadcrumbs rare
 Many allow sorting by attribute to facilitate comparison

“Others like this” simply moves up the hierarchy

Application to Biomedical Text

Asthma > Steroids
1.
A steroid-induced acute psychosis in a child with athsma.
2.
Management of steroid-dependent asthma with methotrexate .
Steroids
•Pregnanes
• Pregnadienes (5)
•
Prednisone (5)
• Pregnenes
•
Budesonide (4)
•
Corticosterone (3)
Other Views
• Admin & Dosage (50)
• Drug Effects (20
• Therapeutic Use (25)
• Risk Factors (4)
• More …
User Preferred
• Musculoskeletal (4)
•Drug Resistance (6)
•All Categories (99)
99 Documents: [Sort by author] [Sort by popularity] [Sort by Steroids] [Cluster]
1. Effect of short-course budesonide on the bone turnover of asthmatic children.
2. Effect of prednisone on response to influenza virus vaccine in asthmatic children.
…

Asthma > Steroids
1.
A steroid-induced acute psychosis in a child with athsma.
2.
Management of steroid-dependent asthma with methotrexate .
Steroids
•Pregnanes
• Pregnadienes (5)
•
Prednisone (5)
• Pregnenes
•
Budesonide (4)
•
Corticosterone (3)
Other Views
• Admin & Dosage (50)
• Drug Effects (20
• Therapeutic Use (25)
• Risk Factors (4)
• More …
User Preferred
• Musculoskeletal (4)
•Drug Resistance (6)
•All Categories (99)
99 Documents: [Sort by author] [Sort by popularity] [Sort by Steroids] [Cluster]
1. Effect of short-course budesonide on the bone turnover of asthmatic children.
2. Effect of prednisone on response to influenza virus vaccine in asthmatic children.
…

Asthma > Steroids
1.
A steroid-induced acute psychosis in a child with athsma.
2.
Management of steroid-dependent asthma with methotrexate .
Steroids
•Pregnanes
Pregnadienes (5)
Prednisone (5)
• Pregnenes
Budesonide (4)
Corticosterone (3)
Other Views
• Admin & Dosage (50)
• Drug Effects (20
• Therapeutic Use (25)
• Risk Factors (4)
• More …
User Preferred
• Musculoskeletal (4)
•Drug Resistance (6)
•All Categories (99)
99 Documents: [Sort by author] [Sort by popularity] [Sort by Steroids] [Cluster]
1. Effect of short-course budesonide on the bone turnover of asthmatic children.
2. Effect of prednisone on response to influenza virus vaccine in asthmatic children.
…

Asthma > Steroids > Admin & Dosage
1.
Dosage levels for asthmatic steroids: A survey.
Steroids
•Pregnanes
Pregnadienes (3)
Prednisone (5)
Related Categories
•Inhalators (40)
•Emotional Effects (25)
•Preferred Suppliers (30)
User Preferred
• Musculoskeletal (0)
•Drug Resistance (2)
•All Categories (50)
50 Documents: [Sort by author] [Sort by popularity] [Sort by Dosage] [Cluster]
1. Optimal dosage levels for prednisone in the treatment of childhood asthma.
2. …

Other paths: back up and go forward
Asthma > Steroids
Asthma > Steroids > Budesonide
Asthma > Steroids > Budesonide > Huang
Asthma > Huang > Budesonide

Medical example
 Use dynamic previews
 Allow user to select metadata in any order
 At each step, show different types of relevant metadata,
 based on prior steps and personal history,
 include # of documents
 Previews restricted to only those metadata types that might be helpful

Dynamic Metadata Previews
 How different from Yahoo & Amazon?
 Dynamically determine what to show next


Yahoo’s combos are predefined
Amazon’s are also predefined, and limited to taste and general topic only
 A way to seamlessly integrate
 Related topics
 User preferences (personalization)
 Context-sensitivity

Application to Image Search

Summary
 Investigating how to design websites containing large sets of items
 Biomedical text
 Architectural images
 Metadata is being mixed and matched in interesting ways, but there are no guidelines on what works

Summary
Our goals
 Systematically determine what works, with the following emphases:
 Task-centric
 Integrate metadata with search
 Dynamic previews
 Easily retrace steps
 Develop recommendations that reflect both the task structure and the richness of the information structure
 In future: integrate with more sophisticated displays

http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~hearst