CDVE2014 Keynote Speech
Collaborative Web Search: Toward Next-Generation Information-Seeking Experiences

Today, Web search is largely a solitary experience. Web browsers and search engine sites are typically designed to support a single user, working alone. Collaborative tools can result in improved information-seeking outcomes, such as increasing searchers' coverage of the relevant information space, reducing unnecessary redundant work across searchers, and exposing searchers to new search strategies and syntax. Social search tools can also improve the subjective experience of information seeking, such as by increasing searchers' confidence in the quality of discovered information, and by transforming information-seeking into an experience that feels playful or that strengthens social bonds. In this talk, I will reflect on what I have learned through my experiences creating several prototype systems for collaborative Web search.

 About the speaker Dr. Meredith Ringel Morris

Dr. Meredith Ringel Morris from Microsoft and the University of Washington will be our Keynote speaker this year. Dr. Meredith Ringel Morris is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research. She is also an Affiliate Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and in the Information School at the University of Washington. Dr. Morris’s research area is human-computer interaction, with a particular emphasis on computer-supported cooperative work and social computing.

 She co-authored the book Collaborative Web Search: Who, What, Where, When, and Why? (Morgan & Claypool, 2010).

The Technology Review recognized her work on collaborative information seeking by naming her one of 2008’s “35 innovators under 35.” Dr. Morris earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from Stanford University, and an Sc.B. in computer science from Brown University. More information, including her full list of publications, can be found on her website, http://research.microsoft.com/~merrie.