Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Making search work – critical success factors
- 1 Search must work
- 2 How search works
- 3 The search business
- 4 Making a business case for search
- 5 Specifying and selecting a search engine
- 6 Optimizing search performance
- 7 Search usability
- 8 Desktop search
- 9 Implementing web search
- 10 Implementing search for an intranet
- 11 Enterprise search
- 12 Multilingual search
- 13 Future directions
- Appendix Search software vendors
- Further reading
- Glossary
- Subject index
- Company index
5 - Specifying and selecting a search engine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Making search work – critical success factors
- 1 Search must work
- 2 How search works
- 3 The search business
- 4 Making a business case for search
- 5 Specifying and selecting a search engine
- 6 Optimizing search performance
- 7 Search usability
- 8 Desktop search
- 9 Implementing web search
- 10 Implementing search for an intranet
- 11 Enterprise search
- 12 Multilingual search
- 13 Future directions
- Appendix Search software vendors
- Further reading
- Glossary
- Subject index
- Company index
Summary
In this chapter:
■ Using personas to develop a specification
■ The critical role that a document audit plays in search selection
■ IT systems architecture issues
■ The stages of the selection process
Introduction
The basic principles of specifying and selecting search software are the same as for any other category of software, including a clear identification of the business need, and defining user requirements. However, with search software the process of defining user requirements is more complex, because:
■ There is a range of tasks that the search software will be supporting.
■ There is unlikely to be any previous experience of specifying search software.
■ Specifying the performance of search software involves both hardwarerelated elements (which are relatively easy to specify) and user-related elements that are much more difficult to specify.
■ The performance will be highly specific to a specific collection, or collections, of documents.
Indeed, where there is currently no search feature, or at best very limited search functionality, there can be some substantial issues in developing a specification against which to evaluate the search products. For example, at least one search vendor requires information about the number of searches to be conducted in order to scale the hardware for the system.
Using personas to specify user requirements
The use of personas to specify user requirements for websites and intranets is now well established, and there is a considerable literature on how to undertake persona development.
A persona is a real virtual user. The ‘person’ described does not actually exist, but is created through research to typify some of the characteristics of a group of users. Biographical details are developed, even down to a photograph, so that the persona is so ‘real’ that the web team or intranet team start to identify with them as individual members of staff or as visitors to the website.
The main characteristics of personas are as follows:
■ Personas are hypothetical archetypes, or ‘stand-ins’ for actual users, that assist in defining and prioritizing user requirements.
■ Personas are not real people, but represent real people throughout the specification process, and are defined in sufficient detail to create the illusion that they are real people.
■ Personas are defined by the tasks they undertake, not by the organizational structure.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Making Search WorkImplementing web, intranet and enterprise search, pp. 49 - 64Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2007