Takuji Imai


The following are some observations and comments as the Observer.

* Did the Assistant provide effective assistance for the Searcher?
    Not really. He gave some operational cues such as how to use Alta
Vista, or provided some URLs for several Web sites which seemed to be
useful. Sometimes those information is needed and useful, but in our 
case it didn't help searching. We couldn't find any answers.
    What the Searcher needed was, I think, some hint about searching
strategy. They should have applied more systematic ways. Sometimes the 
Searcher seemed to spend too much time for one path, or select an
option arbitrarily. The Assistant's suggestion was also somewhat 
arbitrary.
    This may have been caused by the fact that the Searcher never
asked about searching strategy explicitly. And the conversation 
between the Searcher and the Assistant had some tempo, so probably 
it was difficult to the Assistant to explain an organized search 
strategy because it might mean to broke the rhythm of conversation. 
Of course sometimes the Assistant gave some new direction, such as new 
URL,when the Searcher came to a dead end. But those direction didn't 
seem consistent. One of the reasons might be the Assistant didn't have 
enough time to figure out appropriate search strategy.
    Those observation suggest that the Assistant for this task, either 
software or human, should have an ability to provide some good strategy
to the Searcher when it's needed. The strategy should be based on some
knowledge about WWW and the domain of interest. Also it should be 
formulated in real time fashion to adapt itself to the context. 

* Were there interactions smooth and communication between them good?
* Were there times when one of them misunderstood the other?
    The communication between them were very smooth. I don't think there
was any misunderstanding. Both of them knew the context well, and could adapt 
their comments to it. Assistant's suggestions were short and understandable. 
But as I noted before, this doesn't necessarily mean that 
the conversation was productive.


* What could either the Searcher or the Assistant have done to 
facilitate working together?
    I didn't notice anything about this. Their interaction seemed so 
natural. They didn't try to interrupt the natural flow of conversation. 
They kept talking, they never missed a beat.