Exploratory Search: Lessons
May 1, 2012

Several lessons learned from implementing exploratory search at Readrz (so far):

• There is a need from a wide audience for exploratory tools
• Starting point of exploration is important, and there can be two entry points:
  • Top-down: narrowing down the content based on suggested sections
  • Bottom-up: search for key words, and then having options to extend/shift results
• Search: users are not interested in seeing broad categories at the top of search results because they can bring a lot of “related” results which do not correspond to search query exactly. Instead they want to see the exact search results first, and only then some additional options to extend/shift the results.