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SUPPORTING DOMAIN SPECIFIC WEB-BASED SEARCH USING HEURISTIC KNOWLEDGE EXTRACTIONGunanathan, Sudharsan 16 January 2010 (has links)
Modern search engines like Google support domain-independent search over the
vast information contained in web documents. However domain-specific information
access, such as finding less well-known people, locations, and events are not performed
efficiently without users developing sophisticated query strategies. This thesis describes
the design and development of an application to support one such domain-specific
information activity: for insurance (and related) companies to identify weather and
natural disaster damage to better assess when and where personnel will be needed. The
approach presented to supporting such activity combines information extraction with an
interactive presentation of results. Previous domain specific search engines extract
information about papers, people, and course information using rule-based or learningbased
techniques. However they use the results of information extraction in a typical
query and list of results interface. They fail to address the need for interaction based on
the extracted document features. The domain specific web-based search application
developed in this project combines information extraction with the interactive display of results to facilitate rapid information location. A heuristic evaluation was performed to
determine whether the application met the design goals and to improve the design.
Thus the final application has an unconventional but interactive presentation of
the results with the use of tree based display. The application also allows options for user
specific results caching and modification of the search and caching process. With a
heuristic based search process it extracts information about place, date and damages
regarding a specific disaster using a bank of search heuristics developed.
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How Information Retrieval Systems Impact on Designers' Searching Strategies Within the Early Stages of the Design ProcessFrancis, Caroline M. January 2006 (has links)
The purpose of this research is to investigate the influences that Information Retrieval Systems such as online Search Engines and Databases have on designers' early searching strategies. The study involves the observation of designers transforming early design language into query 'keyword' language for the operation of Information Retrieval Systems and how this transition causes a shift in early design exploration. This transformation is referred to in this research as the CLASS activity; Converting Language from Abstract Searching to Specific. Findings show a common pattern across the activity of both professional and advanced student designers. Information Retrieval Systems are seen to drive the searching process into specific, explored domains rather than stimulate an 'abstract' broad investigation. The IR systems are built upon categories that are created to manage the information content. It is these categories that require a person to use defined keywords and query sentences to operate the Information Retrieval Systems. The findings suggest that using Information Retrieval Systems prior to defining the scope of a design problem causes designers to prematurely focus on specific searching.
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