CHI - From X-Rays to Silly Putty via Uranus

From X-Rays to Silly Putty via Uranus: Serendipity and its Role in Web Search
By Paul Andre (University of Southhampton), Jaime Teevan, and Susan T. Dumais (Microsoft Research)

Summary:

The researchers performed a study on today's web search engines to determine if their accuracy has removed the "serendipitous encounters" of new information. These events are quite beneficial to problem solving and determining new interests. However, search engines must balance being direct and relevant in their resulting queries while maintaining the possible for the unexpected.

Study

Thirty-six -participants (Microsoft employees) were to define their search results by either relevance (relevant, partially, or not) and interestingness ( interesting, partially, or not). Also, only the odd numbered results from the top 50 were presented to the user by Live Search and all had to be classified. Then, they analyzed the search logs for a 1-month time period.

Results showed that search engines are accurate in their query results but there is still room for serendipity. As they measured, click entropy is correlated with serendipitous queries.

Discussion:

This article introduced the topic of the ability of search engines to deliver related information but not exclude the possibility of finding unknown and unexpected information. I agree with the paper that sometimes it feels like luck that you discover information that helps with solving a problem or exposes you to a completely different solution.