Healing the Information Overload

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Healing the Information Overload

• Group B Explores the Options

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The ScenarioInformation Overload

• Joe, a car mechanic, decides to Google for cheap
  beautiful Jaguars for sale. What did he get?
• Jaguar - Daimler car parts for sale
• UK Cheap Shop Search UK shopping Accessories
  jaguar perfume
• Concert Tickets - Theatre Tickets - Sports
  Tickets
• Jacksonville Jags collectors shot glass MINT
• Buy, Sell, Trade Jaguars, Jaguar Parts and Jaguar
  Accessories. ... XJS If anyone can give me any
  info on where to get cheap conversion kits ...

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Why did this happen?

• Data is huge. Google says Results 1 - 10 of
  about 2,750
• Queries are difficult to ask
• Popular engines not expressive enough
• Proposed systems are too complex
• Even SQL is too complex for everyday use
• How to translate what you want into a query
  expression?
• Preferences and desires are by definition fuzzy
• cheap, beautiful

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Proposal 1 User-friendly Query Interface

• Problems
• How do we define user-friendly?
• Different kinds of user-friendly?
• Intuitive expressiveness an oxymoron?
• Interactive query refinement?
• Interactive? How about automatic?

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Proposal 2 Result Navigation

• Problems
• How to organize results meaningfully?
• Present 10 representative results instead of lots
• How do we create a similarity hierarchy?
• How to solve partial ordering problems?
• Use user interaction to refine results

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Proposal 3 Data Mining to Assist Navigation

• Problems
• How do we determine what results are reliable?
• What results are hot in a specific context?
• Why not exploit user habits?

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Proposal 4 Private User Profiles

• Lets use profiles to refine queries and results.
• Problems
• How to organize user profiles?
• How to maintain user profiles automatically?
• Integration with user control
• How to aggregate user profiles for joint
  searching?
• For instance, husband and wife (two-body
  problem)

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