Juanita Leatham e-portfolio

Competency E: Design, query, and evaluate information retrieval systems.

Introduction

Information retrieval systems can be search engines like Google, musical search engines like Spotify, or even medical search engines. The design of such systems revolves around the design of language input and questions or queries and the evaluation of the language. Using language to answer queries is to evaluate the language as a whole and is to also evaluate information retrieval systems.

Design

When I think of design I think of levels of importance and organization. Each website, for instance Google, designs their site to answer questions with keywords or strings of language. When I think of Spotify, the music playing platform, I think of artists and song names. UX managers organize their websites by using pre-coordinate and precise keywords. Or, when I think of medical search engines I think of doctors and diseases. So, when I type in the search bar of any one of these examples, there will be an answer, song, or doctor or disease journal that pops up. Taken from notes of INFO 231 by Professor Megaridis, she describes retrieval systems as “Using appropriate data analysis, text analysis, visualization, and similar tools to analyze information in order to extract insights and meaning” (Megaridis, 2024). Having a search bar leads to more information than what’s on the surface of a website. It holds data hierarchies or trees as I like to call them that link to each other behind the scenes or in the back-end of a website. 

Query

A query is the question you pose in, for example, the front end of Google. The song or artist in the search bar of Spotify the music application. Or the search bar of a medical search engine. A query refers to language trees in the back end of a search engine. The searcher asks a question or types in related keywords on the front end of a website and these bring up connections to one another on the back end. For example, a person types in a Spotify search query for the Rolling Stones. This one act of selecting the enter key or the magnifying glass icon brings up the Rolling Stones Greatest Hits, the Rolling Stones Radio and on and on. In a group project, we were to use an information retrieval keyword database based on popular music suggestions. “After that critique of selecting multiple artists that would not come through, selecting the song only rules worked well. I chose to look further at Artist and Songs because those are the most popular search queries that searchers would look further into” (Leatham, et al., 2024). I basically used the way Spotify uses their search queries – by artist and song. Queries, in short, are the keywords that relate to one another in the back end to the front end of a search engine on a website.

Evaluate

To evaluate is to assess “If we create online learning objects such as videos, tutorials, and library guides, [and how] we can use web analytics to track usage of these resources. It is important to note that while these numbers can help us evaluate the impact and reach of our programs, they do not measure quality or learner satisfaction” (Wong, n.d.). We can apply the same concept of tracking data analytics to tracking information on search engines. There are sites like Google that openly track Google Trends or keywords that show popularity at any given time. For example, when the term Virtual Reality peaked in popularity over the past five years. Which was on December 26, 2021 to January 1, 2022. We can apply the same concept of data analytics like Google Analytics or the evaluation of a medical website. The site runner can look at the analytics of the search engine on the back end and see what disease, doctor, or concept was searched the most.

Evidence

1 – INFO 202: Information Retrieval System Design: Recommendations for Re-Design of Torrid.com

My first piece of evidence for Competency E involves a hypothetical re-design of a website. In order to focus on design, I chose the re-design of Torrid.com, a plus size women’s clothing store. When skimming through the website I noticed that there was a lot of information and all on the front page. It was overwhelming and crowded. It has ten different categories plus drop down menus for clothing, bras, and bathing suits. In order to re-design I had to look at the site with UX or user experience eyes. The design of the site relied on the site map, which looks like a word tree with an end goal of information retrieval. Every one of the ten categories has a site map that leads to subcategories and different menus. “Having all these sub-categories is a bit much to be honest. These are drill down portions that almost force the viewers’ attention too much so that they would have to keep clicking around the page to find what they need” (Leatham, 2024). Thinking like a site visitor, I clicked on the photos or the keywords to find what the site needed. Or, I used the “What are you searching for?” search bar. This left me overwhelmed that the site map on the back end must have been chaotic for the UX manager. In the end, I narrowed down the front page site map to “to Summer. Beneath Summer, I would add sub-categories called Bathing Suits, Dresses, Shorts, and Tops. I believe that these categories would funnel the site visitor directly to the most popular clothing types for the summer season” (Leatham, 2024).

2 – INFO 202 Information Retrieval System Design: Project 1 reflections [individual]

My second piece of evidence for Competency E is about queries and information retrieval systems. Questions connected to keywords can lead us to what we are looking for or not looking for. “After that critique of selecting multiple artists that would not come through, selecting the song only rules worked well. I chose to look further at Artist and Songs because those are the most popular search queries that searchers would look further into” (Leatham, 2024). In this assignment I was to work with my group mates and design a search engine that worked with keywords of songs, artists, publisher, and genre we input into the information retrieval system. We were then supposed to see which keywords worked best for searchers. This quote describes the challenge of information retrieval or the inputting keywords into a search engine and having it lead to high recall and precise keyword search results. The role of the query is to find out the exact information about the subject one is searching for. If a searcher did not find the song or artist they wanted immediately there needs to be an expanded vocabulary of keywords. Meaning we must have the vocabulary for that query. This is a backend UX or user experience issue. Vocabulary could be changed on the back end once we analyzed what searchers were looking for.

3 – INFO 202 Information Retrieval System Design: Discussion 3: Evaluating Searches

My third piece of evidence for Competency E is to focus on evaluation. In order to evaluate searches I had to focus on two search engines – Google Scholar and San Jose Public Library where I searched for the terms “dogs” and “happiness”. Next, I was to find access points from each of the two search engines. This meant to find articles that covered all of the words. Meaning, using both “dogs” and “happiness” with the two search engines plus the Boolean search word “AND”. So, the search looked similar using the advanced search option, search title and author looked the same, and looked like “dogs AND happiness”. The search looked different for “3. Which ones are different? a. Subject, tag and list for San Jose Public Library are different than Google Scholar” (Leatham, 2024). After that, I was supposed to choose a third search engine to look for something in retail. I chose to search for Converse Shoes. What I was to look for were “attributes like color, style, size, target user, purpose” (Leatham, 2024). I chose “Color: Court Purple/Court Purple and Green/Vintage White Style: Unisex High Top Canvas and Suede Shoe Size: Men’s 3 to Women’s 4.5 to Men’s 13 to Women’s 14.5 Target user: Men and Women Purpose: Street Wear, Casual” (Leatham, 2024). To evaluate the search there were questions about the target users for the site and why. My evaluation showed that the Converse sneakers I chose were casual but could also be used as a dressier shoe. After that, I was to see what the most important search options were on the site and why. To use just one example, I chose “Custom – people love to create and customize their own shoes to match their aesthetic or clothing!” (Leatham, 2024). The evaluation of what kind of shoe and why completed the assignment.

Conclusion

In the future I plan to use the ability to use design techniques and query to evaluate information retrieval systems. When I help patrons at the public library I will show them the correct way to use search engines so they get the most accurate results and can walk out of the library with what they need. As a librarian, I intend on using words that use high precision and high recall keywords so that the library visitor can search for what they are looking for. However, I’m sure I will run across topics that need evaluating using Boolean search words and several search terms or strings of words that come up with more vast search results.

References

Leatham, J. (2024). Discussion 3: Evaluating searches. [Google Doc]. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vve4u4IPcMSTccMnzMaf0TYa0U3BozZqHpyYGtvwMG8/edit?usp=sharing. 

Leatham, J. (2024). Project 1 reflections [individual]. [Google Doc]. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1inJUOfabDxpyKmixLneQZaozqx8UxSRuoDOrxt56L7E/edit?usp=sharing.

Leatham, J. (2024). Recommendations for re-design of Torrid.com. [Google Doc]. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wswjowVDffxwBGTmesipzJkih9bfVKaj/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=111532206102750806113&rtpof=true&sd=true.

Megaridis, C. (2024). Unit 2: Notes: Competencies for information professionals. [Google Doc]. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ncjk61ZYzDj3j8qCo4hLS6gBWa0UwReOnvNnvQfNl_E/edit?usp=sharing. 

Google trends. (n.d.). https://trends.google.com/trends/ 

Wong, S. (2025). Saunders Wong Ch 4, 5, 6, 10, 19, 20, 8, 11, 16, 20, 9, 13. [Google Doc]. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I4LP_mxgXfQqBorLdUpIGmipaAFlutZ-2DQtFovADi0/edit?usp=sharing.