Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2.2
RELATIONSHIPS AMONG COLLABORATORS
The relationship among group members is also important to understand when building support
for collaborative search. In this section, we look at the direction, strength, and longevity of the
relationships commonly present, and we discuss the potential impact of group size.
The relationships among collaborators may be either symmetric or asymmetric, depending on
the degree to which the group members share an information need and depending on the role each
takes on to address that need. A
symmetric collaboration
is one in which the collaborators share an
information need and fulfill the same roles in the search. An
asymmetric collaboration
is one in which
the collaborators fulfill different roles. This may arise as a result of a division of a search task into
roles based on familiarity with technology, job hierarchy, or specific expertise (
Morris and Horvitz
,
2007b
;
Morris et al.
,
2008
;
Pickens et al.
,
2008
). It also can arise as a result of asymmetric information
needs, where one collaborator enlists the assistance of others. Examples of this include receiving
assistance from a reference librarian (
Taylor, R.
,
1968
), participating in a guided search experience
Morris et al.
,
2010c
).
George and Martha, when searching for common household asthma irritants, run into friction
because of the implicit asymmetry of their roles in the search task, with George controlling the
computer and Martha looking over his shoulder. Martha gets frustrated that she cannot control
what is happening and leaves the collaboration. When they later explicitly partition the task of
finding a contractor to inspect their house for mold, they manage instead to use asymmetric roles to
their advantage. The roles George and Martha took on when sharing a single computer are often
referred to as the “driver” (the user controlling the input devices) and the “observer(s)” (the user(s)
looking over the driver's shoulder and making suggestions) (
Amershi and Morris
,
2008
).
A few collaborative search tools are designed specifically to support asymmetric search roles.
For example, Cerchiamo (Figure 2.1) supports pairs of users searching together for online video
clips. These two users each take on a distinct role - one user acts as the “prospector,” discovering new
avenues of exploration, while the other acts as the “miner,” determining which of these avenues are
valuable and exploring them in-depth. These two roles each have distinct user interfaces (Figure 2.2),
with the prospector having a rich query-formulation interface and the miner having an interface for
rapid serial visual presentation of individual search results.
Another example of system support for asymmetric search roles is Morris et al.'s Smart Split-
ting system (
Morris et al.
,
2008
) (Figure 2.3).
Smart Splitting divides users into roles based on their areas of expertise. Expertise is deter-
mined based on the use of personalization techniques (e.g., (
Teevan et al.
,
2005
)) which analyze the
vocabulary terms present in files on the user's personal computer, as well as the user's past Web his-
tory. During a collaborative search, Smart Splitting divides search results such that each collaborator
receives the search results most pertinent to his or her expertise. For example, if Martha and her
doctor had conducted a joint search to learn more about asthma treatments, Smart Splitting would
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