Improving The User Experience - Part I

May 14, 2010 

Lyrasis Office
3000 Market Street
Suite 200
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(Across from Amtrak's 30th Street Train Station)

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"While content itself continues to form the foundation of modern information solutions, the real differentiator is becoming the broader "user experience (1)." The Web, combined with sophisticated search engines and autonomous agents, has become the dominant worldwide search and retrieval system. It not only meets the information needs of its users, but also provides them with a highly satisfactory "experience" - from start to finish. The new generation of information seekers now expects a seamless, multi-sensory, interactive - and enjoyable - search experience that is their benchmark for an acceptable information retrieval service. Indeed, their product loyalty and satisfaction are "driven by a different set of values that goes beyond content and extends to the experience of using that content.2"

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8:30am - 9:00am: Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00am - 9:15am: Welcome

Bonnie Lawlor, Executive Director, NFAIS
Moderator: Maureen C. Kelly, Consultant, Content Kinetics

9:15am - 10:00am: Opening Keynote: The User Search Experience: What Users Want  

This session will focus on the results of a study done to determine how relevant library resources could be made more visible, particularly within the user workflow. It will discuss five key trends related to information discovery and how those trends are reflected in user information seeking behavior.

Cody Hanson, Technology Librarian, University of Minnesota [ Slides]

10:00am - 10:15am: Break and Networking Opportunity

10:15am - 12:15am: The Search Interface: Making a Good First Impression with Users

This session will provide an overview of the ideal user interface and the challenges involved in "getting it right." It will look the methods and procedures of design and how to turn data into accessible information via technology that clearly communicates with the people that use it. It will take a look at the unique requirements of interfaces for mobile devices and the interface challenges that are unique to the academic library environment. In closing it will highlight how one publisher is developing a journal article interface for researchers who need to interact with article datasets.

• Overview: Harold Hambrose, CEO/Founder, Electronic Ink
• Mobile Interface: Loren Frant, Head of Health Information Products, National Library of Medicine  [ Slides]
• Interactive Interface: Jennifer Mayfield, Electronic Journals Manager, Optical Society of America  [ Slides]
• Academic Library Needs: Joseph Lucia, University Librarian, Villanova University [ Slides]

12:15am - 1:30pm: Lunch (will be provided)

1:30pm - 3:00pm: Current Search Technologies

This session will look at three of the major search technologies currently used to access information in academic and corporate environments- their key advantages, their weaknesses, and the future enhancements that can be expected in the near future.

• Semantic Search: Chris Pooley, CEO, Intellidimension, Inc. [ Slides]
• Federated Search: Peter Noerr, CTO, MuseGlobal, Inc. [ Slides]
• Discovery Service: Mike Gorrell, CIO, EBSCO Publishing [ Slides]

3:00pm - 3:15pm: Break and Networking Opportunity

3:15pm - 4:45pm: New and Emerging Technologies 

This session will focus on new and emerging technologies related to specific facets of the overall search experience that are beginning to shape user expectations: social search, on-the-fly translations of search results, and the ability to offer personalized search results.

• Translations: Abe Lederman, President& CEO, Deep Web Technologies [ Slides]
• Personalized Recommendations and Discovery: Sachin Kamdar, CEO, Parse.ly  [ Slides]
• Social Search: Darrell Gunter, Chief Marketing Officer, Collexis Holdings, Inc. [ Slides]