Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Shared task
Age
Gender
Job team
Job role
Location
Interest group
Relevance judgments
Query selection
Desktop content
Task-based
Trait-based
Group Longevity
Figure 2.4:
The different types of collaborative groups studied by
Teevan et al.
(
2009b
), broken down
by group longevity and how the group was identified.
Teevan et al. explored can be seen in Figure 2.4. Also shown in the figure is whether the group
was identified explicitly, with group members declaring their membership, or implicitly, such as by
identifying users with potentially similar interests based on similarity in the queries they issue or
results they click on, or based on other factors such as shared employment (e.g.,
Smyth, B.
(
2007
)).
Collaborative search falls on the explicit end of the spectrum.
Group size is another key aspect of group composition that can affect the types of relationships
among collaborators, as groups may range from small and intimate to large and potentially unwieldy.
Morris, M.R.
(
2008
) found that, for shared-task groups, 80.7% collaborated in pairs while 19.3%
worked in groups of three or four members, with none reporting larger group sizes; this lack of larger
groups might be an artifact of the lack of tools for supporting such interactions, however. Of course,
social search systems that rely on implicit collaboration by users with shared topical interests in order
to re-rank results can be used by groups several orders of magnitude larger (e.g.,
Freyne and Smyth
(
2006
);
Teevan et al.
(
2009b
);
Smythetal.
(
2009
)) and, in fact, are typically more useful with larger
groups to draw data from.
2.3
WHO: CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Understanding the categories of users who most often search collaboratively, and the group config-
urations used to do so, provides a solid foundation for designing tools to support such users' needs.
Knowing that students, families, library patrons, and information workers frequently collaborate on
search tasks provides an initial picture of this user landscape, although there is more to be learned. For
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