The 38th Super Happy Dev House will be held at Hacker Dojo on Saturday June 26, 2010. Here are the slides for my Lightning Talk. An MS thesis result in the field of Human Computer Interaction. Purpose of the study: To examine whether using Social Search Engines have positive impact on user Efficiency, Effectiveness, Satisfaction, and Emotional states.

1. Traditional versus Social Search Engines:
Will they Rescue us from Drowning in the
Ocean of Web Resources?
A Project for Master of Science
ISE & HCI
Nilo Sarraf
Lightning Talk - SHDH 38
June 2010

2. Information Overflow
Problem:
Information overflow on the World Wide Web makes it increasingly difficult
to find exact, specific, and in-depth information and web resources
Purpose:
To examine whether using Social Search Engines have positive impact
on user Efficiency, Effectiveness, Satisfaction, and Emotional state
Four Hypothesis:
1. There will be a significant difference between using TSE versus using SSE in terms of the amount
of time that it takes to find the targeted web resources
2. There will be a significant difference between using TSE versus SSE in terms of task completion
3. There will be a significant difference between using TSE versus SSE in terms of user satisfaction
rate
4. There will be a significant difference between using TSE versus SSE in terms of users emotional
state

3. Methodology
A Two-Way Repeated Measures ANOVA
Search Engines:
TSE - Traditional Search Engine
SSE - Social Search Engine
Task Levels/Query Levels:
Objective, Combination, Subjective
N = 20 Objective Combination Subjective
(2 tasks) (2 tasks) (2 tasks)
TSE 4 Measures: 4 Measures: 4 Measures:
1. Time on Task 1. Time on Task 1. Time on Task
SSE 2. Task Completion 2. Task Completion 2. Task Completion
3. Satisfaction 3. Satisfaction 3. Satisfaction
4. Emotion 4. Emotion 4. Emotion

4. Main Findings
• Efficiency (Time on Task)
– Search Engine Main Effect
• Effectiveness (Task Completion)
– Interaction: Search Engine by Task/Query Level
• Satisfaction
– Task/Query Level Main Effect
– Interaction: Search Engine by Task Level
• Emotion
– Search Engine Main Effect

5. Significance
• Efficiency (Time on Task)
– TSE for objective queries
takes significantly less time
than using SSE
• Effectiveness (Task Completion)
– More tasks successfully
completed using SSE for
Subjective queries while less
tasks completed using SSE for
Objective queries

6. Significance
• Satisfaction
– Higher satisfaction using SSE for Subjective queries while lower
satisfaction using SSE for Objective queries
• Emotion
– Increasingly positive (Happy!) using SSE for Subjective queries

7. Conclusions
• Social search engines are better for subjective, specific, and in-
depth queries
• Humans have different needs for different queries
• There is significant difference in how we come to experience
web search depending on the type of information we need
• Traditional search engines need to get ‘smarter’
• The human brain is a search engines too!
• Combining human-brain with machine-brain gives best results in
our web resource queries
• A combination of Social and Traditional search engine appears
to provide the best and the most pleasant search experience for
users!

8. A video clip illustrating how a combination of Social and Traditional search engines
may give the best search results and user experience:
“I’d give this Aardvark search result a BIG 5 if this answer also included the relevant
link to top off this answer!”

9. Stressful Body Postures:
‘Subjective Queries’ using Traditional Search Engine

10. Limitations
• Trusting your Data
– Turning qualitative data into quantitative data
• Number of Participants

11. Future Research
• Add additional traditional and social search engines
• Include more participants
• Put more emphasis on the Emotional measurement -
include in-depth follow-up questionnaire to cover the
emotional states more thoroughly

12. Q?
Nilo.Sarraf@gmail.com
415.488.NILO