1. Improving search at UCL Dan Jackson Senior Web Architect, UCL @beesman

2. Generally, the UCL search was described as ‘not fit for purpose’ by those that use it….The result is that many users do not use the UCL search and instead use Google search or find other navigation mechanisms. Nomensa UCL Audit & User Research Report

5. CHALLENGE #1 SEARCH ENGINE CONFIGURATION

6. When it comes to search, install and forget no longer works. http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/11028-site-search-install-optimise-and-maintain

8. CHALLENGE #2 CONTENT QUALITY/SCOPE

9. Without good content quality no search engine is going to deliver quality (trustworthy) results. Martin White, ‘Why All Search Projects Fail’ http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/why-all-search-projects-fail-019558.php

10. In most situations, the decentralized publishing model has been disastrous. The people trained tended to be relatively junior staff, for whom publishing to the website was just one more responsibility. The result was lots and lots of poor quality content that was never updated or reviewed http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/decentralized-publishing-equals-amateur-web-management

11. 744,027 <5 page views in 2013

14. Docs without <title> 10,334 Docs with duplicate <title> 26,527 Docs with no metadata 16,164

20. KNOWN UNKNOWN KNOWN DIRECTORY DISCOVERY DEGREES

21. CHALLENGE #3 SEARCH UX

23. FACETS RELATED QUERIES FILETYPE FILTER ‘BEST BET’ ADVANCED SEARCH

24. AIM #1 BRING ORDER TO THE CONTENT CHAOS

25. AIM #2 IMPROVE THE SEARCH UX

28. ISO 9241-210: Human-centred design for interactive systems http://isquared.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/five-myths-of-the-ux-design-process/

29. ‘Specify context of use’ Use cases Personas Governance –completing a process, usually involving a definitive document Development – developing a course, a process, a project or event Interface – supporting users Relationship – external user building a relationship with UCL I want to accomplish a task and need a definitive document I need to find out what research is being carried on a topic across UCL I need to find staff with specific expertise or in a specific role

30. ‘Specify requirements’ Scenario C Scenario A Scenario B Persona: Any Task type: Known item Data: People, Research, Websites Goal: I want to find out how to contact Anthony Finkelstein’ Persona: Researcher / academic / media(‘Development’) Task type: Exploratory Data: Events, Websites, Research Goal: ‘I’m organising an event on NLP want to find out who else is working in the area & what they’re doing’ Persona: Prospective postgrad student (‘Relationship’) Task type: Exploratory Data: Courses, Websites Goal: ‘I want to find out what MSc courses are available in chemical engineering’

31. ‘Produce & evaluate design solutions’ Opening game“the stage in the user journey prior to query articulation”Middle game“the main phase in the search experience, where queries are clarified, disambiguated, refined, etc.”

32. ‘Produce & evaluate design solutions’ Opening game: “the stage in the user journey prior to query articulation”

33. ‘Produce & evaluate design solutions’ Opening game: “the stage in the user journey prior to query articulation”

34. ‘Produce & evaluate design solutions’ Opening game: “the stage in the user journey prior to query articulation”

35. ‘Produce & evaluate design solutions’ Opening game: “the stage in the user journey prior to query articulation”

36. ‘Produce & evaluate design solutions’ Middle game: “the main phase in the search experience, where queries are clarified, disambiguated, refined, etc.

37. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/indigo/ | https://github.com/UCL-WAMS/indigo/

41. Thanks Twitter: @beesman