[Last call][Design] Search - Relevance

[Mimi Yin]

Hi John,

I don't disagree that in the abstract, the ability to change views is  
useful. My concern has to do with the fact that 'Search results'  
itself is a 5th kind of view, the other 4 being: Day View, Week View,  
Dashboard and Table...and that it is not intuitive how you invoke it  
again once you've switched away from it.

I am reluctant to have 5 view options in the View menu, so for  
Preview, I'm suggesting that we shorten it to Day View, Week View and  
the thing we call Dashboard under the hood, but should probably  
present to the user as a Table...and display search results in the  
Dashboard/Table.

I think we need to reframe this issue in terms of user needs again.  
In concrete terms, what are the specific use cases for being able to  
switch views independent of the App area? For example, what specific  
task would a user be trying to accomplish when say:
+ Viewing just their Home Task list in a Calendar view?
+ Viewing the Dashboard in the Calendar app area in a Calendar view?
+ Viewing their Home collection as a generic Table as opposed to as a  
sectioned Dashboard?

How common are these use cases?

Mimi


On Feb 6, 2007, at 5:08 PM, D John Anderson wrote:

> Consider this situation: Suppose you are looking for items by  
> searching for "/Search John Anderson". Lucene returns all the items  
> with the word John followed by the work Anderson with a higher rank  
> than all the items with words between John and Anderson. This can  
> be a really handy feature.
>
> While I'd be the last person to use this single example as proof  
> that Lucene rank is generally useful, I think it's equally  
> premature to use Jeffrey's experience to conclude that Lucene rank  
> is never useful.  I think we should leaving rank in Preview, if for  
> no other reason than getting more experience with it.
>
> However, whether or not we include rank is independent from what  
> the default sort (or view) is -- after all you can always change  
> the sort or view to be whatever you like. So I don't think it's  
> necessary to have the default sort be rank.
>
> Finally, I think the issue of letting users change views is  
> independent of the rank/sort or search issues. I find changing  
> views to be useful in lots of situations other than search.
>
> John
>
>
> On Feb 6, 2007, at 4:38 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:
>
>> Are there any more thoughts on this issue? Is there any objection  
>> to sorting search results by Triage status in the 'Dashboard view'  
>> for Preview, thereby simplifying usability issues having to do  
>> with the View selector menu items as well?
>>
>> Mimi
>>
>> On Feb 2, 2007, at 11:48 AM, Mimi Yin wrote:
>>
>>> Sorting by Triage status would clear up the confusion around the  
>>> Views as well. Instead of having a Search view, we could just have:
>>>
>>> + Day View
>>> + Week View
>>> + Table View
>>>
>>> All are viable options, whether or not the user has searched for  
>>> anything.
>>>
>>> Mimi
>>>
>>> On Feb 1, 2007, at 6:21 PM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi John,
>>>>
>>>>> Almost all search in the world today sorts results by relevance  
>>>>> (e.g.
>>>>> Google), so I suspect people will be familiar with the concept. Of
>>>>> course that doesn't mean the relevance is very meaningful.
>>>>>
>>>>> If we don't sort the results by PyLucene relevance, what do we  
>>>>> sort them
>>>>> by? The obvious options include one of our columns in the table  
>>>>> or some
>>>>> new column. Which would you choose?
>>>>
>>>> In playing around with search briefly, I haven't found the PyLucene
>>>> relevance to bear much relationship to how I'd expect relevance  
>>>> to be
>>>> weighted.
>>>>
>>>> For instance, when welcome is searched for, an item who's entire
>>>> contents is a title of "Welcome welcome welcome" is sorted last  
>>>> (among
>>>> several items containing the word welcome), which seemed pretty  
>>>> odd to me.
>>>>
>>>> When I search for "Welcome in both", the item titled "Welcome in  
>>>> both"
>>>> comes up significantly lower ranked than other items that have  
>>>> neither
>>>> "in" nor "both" in their title or body.
>>>>
>>>> So while I love the idea of getting search by relevance, I think  
>>>> I'd be
>>>> frustrated by the hint that relevance was a factor in my  
>>>> searches if I
>>>> didn't believe the relevance scores were accurate.
>>>>
>>>> Probably making it better would take some tweaking and testing  
>>>> of the
>>>> parameters we're handing to PyLucene.
>>>>
>>>> I'd lean towards sorting and sectioning by triage status for  
>>>> now, unless
>>>> other people's experience with this is better than mine.
>>>>
>>>> Sincerely,
>>>> Jeffrey
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