Collaborative Web Search: Who, What, Where, When, and Why (Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services)

Today, Web search is treated as a solitary experience. Web browsers and search engines are typically designed to support a single user, working alone. However, collaboration on information-seeking tasks is actually commonplace. Students work together to complete homework assignments, friends seek information about joint entertainment opportunities, family members jointly plan vacation travel, and colleagues jointly conduct research for their projects. As improved networking technologies and the rise of social media simplify the process of remote collaboration, and large, novel display form-factors simplify the process of co-located group work, researchers have begun to explore ways to facilitate collaboration on search tasks. This lecture investigates the who, what, where, when and why of collaborative search, and gives insight in how emerging solutions can address collaborators' needs. Table of Contents: Introduction / Who? / What? / Where? / When? / Why? / Conclusion: How?

Meredith Ringel Morris is a Researcher in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group at Microsoft Research. She is also an affiliate assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Merrie's main research areas are human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work; her current research focus is on developing and evaluating systems that support collaborative Web search. Merrie was named a Technology Review TR35 2008 Young Innovator for her work on collaborative search. She has co-edited a special issue of Information Processing and Management on collaborative information seeking, and also co-organized multiple workshops on the topic. She earned her Sc.B. in Computer Science from Brown University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Jaime Teevan is a Researcher in the Context, Learning, and User Experience for Search (CLUES) group at Microsoft Research. Her research centers on how our digital past can help shape our future. Jaime was named a Technology Review TR35 2009 Young Innovator for her work on personalized search. She co-edited (with William Jones) the first book on Personal Information Management, co-edited a special issue of Communications of the ACM on the topic, and organized workshops on PIM and query log analysis. Jaime has published more than 30 technical papers, including several best papers, and received a Ph.D. and S.M. from MIT and a B.S. in Computer Science from Yale University.