Ordinary Search Engine Users Carrying Out Complex Search Tasks

Web search engines have become the dominant tools for finding information on the Internet. Due to their popularity, users apply them to a wide range of search needs, from simple look-ups to rather complex information tasks. This paper presents the results of a study to investigate the characteristics of these complex information needs in the context of Web search engines. The aim of the study is to find out more about (1) what makes complex search tasks distinct from simple tasks and if it is possible to find simple measures for describing their complexity, (2) if search success for a task can be predicted by means of unique measures, and (3) if successful searchers show a different behavior than unsuccessful ones. The study includes 60 people who carried out a set of 12 search tasks with current commercial search engines. Their behavior was logged with the Search-Logger tool. The results confirm that complex tasks show significantly different characteristics than simple tasks. Yet it seems to be difficult to distinguish successful from unsuccessful search behaviors. Good searchers can be differentiated from bad searchers by means of measurable parameters. The implications of these findings for search engine vendors are discussed.Comment: 60 page

Impact of Gender and Age on performing Search Tasks Online

More and more people use the Internet to work on duties of their daily work routine. To find the right information online, Web search engines are the tools of their choice. Apart from finding facts, people use Web search engines to also execute rather complex and time consuming search tasks. So far search engines follow the one-for-all approach to serve its users and little is known about the impact of gender and age on people's Web search behavior. In this article we present a study that examines (1) how female and male web users carry out simple and complex search tasks and what are the differences between the two user groups, and (2) how the age of the users impacts their search performance. The laboratory study was done with 56 ordinary people each carrying out 12 search tasks. Our findings confirm that age impacts behavior and search performance significantly, while gender influences were smaller than expected.Comment: 10 page

Konfigurierung von eHome-Systemen

An intelligent home, what could that be? More and more electronic appliances enter our private homes. Their presence seems to become ubiquitous. But we usually do not associate intelligence when we install new electronic appliances in our home environment. When will we start to call a setup of such appliances intelligent? Probably if this setup simplifies tasks at hand in our daily lifes or increases security or comfort of living. Setups of such intelligent home environments in different places all over this world have given us a clue of some useful setups and some useful services which could be provided by these. Such homes are usually called smart homes or eHomes. This work introduces a software engineering approach to support the installation of such setups for regular home owners. Its key contribution is the dissolution of the software development process in favor of a partly automated configuration process. There are various fields where the services provided in such eHome environments could support our daily life: One would be the enhancement of your comfort. This could be a central remote control, personal information management, or even an advanced wakeup service. Another need, which could be satisfied by such a service is security. In this field video surveillance or interactive alarm systems are possible. In the field of communication email, voice-over-ip, or instant messaging services are already widely used. There is a great potential for services in the health sector. Telemedicine or instant medical advise based on up-to-date sensor data are just some examples. Furthermore, infotainment services, like video on demand, teaching, or advanced multimedia experiences are of great interest. Via the monitoring facilities of energy consuming devices, automatic optimizations or exact billing is possible. Of course these areas are not very clearly separated from each other. A security service can also integrate services from other fields, especially using communication or even infotainment abilities. Services integrating different fields will be the most interesting services for potential customers of eHome systems. As the prices of lots of appliances used in the previously discussed services have decreased to affordable amounts. The appliances are affordable for regular home-owners. Hence, from this point of view the hardware for the realization of smart home environments is already available at reasonable costs. The question arising is: Why are eHomes not more conventional? If you have a closer look at all these setups you will discover that these implementations are either research or hobby projects. One of the main barriers blocking a broader spreading of eHomes systems is the price of such systems. Even if appliances are affordable, the software driving an eHome is rather expensive as it is mostly developed or adapted for every single eHome. A complete software development process per case is not affordable for everyone. As software engineers, we are particularly interested in simplifying the software development process, arising when implementing a service for a specific home environment. The vision is: If the software for eHomes could be reused, and its adaptation and configuration be automated, one of the price barriers on home automation mass-market would be broken. The key point of this work is the dissolution of the software development process for eHome systems

Impact of gender and age on performing search tasks online

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Ordinary search engine users assessing difficulty, effort, and outcome for simple and complex search tasks

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