{"id":608568,"date":"2019-09-18T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T15:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/?p=608568"},"modified":"2022-11-07T11:45:31","modified_gmt":"2022-11-07T19:45:31","slug":"hci-ir-and-the-search-for-better-search-with-dr-susan-dumais","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/podcast\/hci-ir-and-the-search-for-better-search-with-dr-susan-dumais\/","title":{"rendered":"HCI, IR and the search for better search with Dr. Susan Dumais"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-608583 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1024x576.png\" alt=\"Dr. Susan Dumais\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1066x600.png 1066w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-655x368.png 655w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-343x193.png 343w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-640x360.png 640w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-960x540.png 960w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1280x720.png 1280w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788.png 1400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/h3>\n<h3>Episode 90, September 18, 2019<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/people\/sdumais\/\">Dr. Susan Dumais<\/a> knows you have things to do, and if you need help finding stuff to get them done (and you probably do) then her long and illustrious career in search technologies has been worth it. Situated firmly in Louis Pasteur\u2019s quadrant of the research grid (the square where you answer \u201cyes\u201d to both the quest for fundamental understanding and use-based applications) the Microsoft Technical Fellow, and Deputy Lab Director of <a href=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/lab\/microsoft-research-ai\/\">MSR AI<\/a>, has made finding information the focus of her career, and has probably made your life a little more productive in the process.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Dr. Dumais tells us how the landscape of information retrieval has evolved over the past twenty years; reminds us that queries don\u2019t fall from the sky but are grounded in the context of real people, real events and real time; talks about her current interest in non-web-based search (or how I can easily put my hands on my own digital belongings) and reveals what apples and Michael Jordan have in common with search research.<\/p>\n<h3>Related:<\/h3>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/podcast\">Microsoft Research Podcast<\/a>: View more podcasts on Microsoft.com<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/microsoft-research-a-podcast\/id1318021537?mt=2\">iTunes<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>: Subscribe and listen to new podcasts each week on iTunes<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribebyemail.com\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\">Email<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>: Subscribe and listen by email<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribeonandroid.com\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\">Android<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>: Subscribe and listen on Android<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/4ndjUXyL0hH1FXHgwIiTWU\">Spotify<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>: Listen on Spotify<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.blubrry.com\/feeds\/microsoftresearch.xml\">RSS feed<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/note.microsoft.com\/ww-registration-microsoft-research-newsletter-s.html?wt.mc_id=S-webpage_podcast\">Microsoft Research Newsletter<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>: Sign up to receive the latest news from Microsoft Research<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<h3>Transcript<\/h3>\n<p>Susan Dumais: I think, more and more, information retrieval is moving from helping people find information to helping people get things done. I\u2019ve spent a lot of my life thinking about search. It is nobody\u2019s end goal. You don\u2019t get up in the morning and say, I\u2019m going to search for the next two minutes. You\u2019re trying to accomplish a task. And search is a means by which you do that. And I think we shouldn\u2019t ever forget that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: You\u2019re listening to the Microsoft Research Podcast, a show that brings you closer to the cutting-edge of technology research and the scientists behind it. I\u2019m your host, Gretchen Huizinga.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Dr. Susan Dumais knows you have things to do, and if you need help finding stuff to get them done (and you probably do) then her long and illustrious career in search technologies has been worth it. Situated firmly in Louis Pasteur\u2019s quadrant of the research grid (the square where you answer \u201cyes\u201d to both the quest for fundamental understanding and use-based applications) the Microsoft Technical Fellow, and Deputy Lab Director of MSR AI, has made finding information the focus of <em>her<\/em> career, and has probably made your life a little more productive in the process.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Today, Dr. Dumais tells us how the landscape of information retrieval has evolved over the past twenty years; reminds us that queries don\u2019t fall from the sky but are grounded in the context of real people, real events and real time; talks about her current interest in non-web-based search (or how I can easily put my hands on my <em>own<\/em> digital belongings) and reveals what apples and Michael Jordan have in common with search research. That and much more on this episode of the Microsoft Research Podcast.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Susan Dumais, welcome to the podcast!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Thank you, Gretchen.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Listen, I\u2019ve been waiting a long time to get you on! Way back in 2017, Eric Horvitz said, you gotta get Susan on the podcast. And I guess you are kind of like a hot Manhattan restaurant: you have to book two years out!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Well, it\u2019s finally come true and it\u2019s fun to be here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: I like to start by situating my guests and their research, so let\u2019s get situated. You\u2019re a Microsoft Technical Fellow and the Deputy Managing Director of Microsoft Research AI, and your work lives at the intersection of <a href=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/research-area\/search-information-retrieval\/\">information retrieval<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/research-area\/human-computer-interaction\/\">human computer interaction<\/a>. Actually, as we\u2019ve noted, it\u2019s a much larger intersection than that, but we\u2019ll keep it at those two roads for now. And you have more papers, patents and honors than it would be prudent to list in a half hour podcast. But it\u2019s worth noting that there\u2019s a common theme running through all the accomplishments and accolades. So, tell us in broad strokes, what\u2019s the driving motivation behind the work you do and why you do it. What gets you up in the morning?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Yeah, I think there are two commonalities and themes in my work. One is topical. So, as you said, I\u2019m really interested in understanding problems from a very user-centric point-of-view. I care a lot about people, their motivations, the problems they have. I also care about solving those problems with new algorithms, new techniques and so on. So, a lot of my work involves this intersection of people and technology, thinking about how work practices co-evolve with new technological developments. And so thematically, that\u2019s an area that I really like. I like this ability to go back and forth between understanding people, how they think, how they reason, how they learn, how they find information, and finding solutions that work for them. In the end, if something doesn\u2019t work for people, it doesn\u2019t work. In addition to topically, I approach problems in a way that is motivated, oftentimes, by things that I find frustrating. We may talk a little bit later about my work in latent sematic indexing, but that grew out of a frustration with trying to learn the Unix operating system. Work I\u2019ve done on email spam, grew out of a frustration in mitigating the vast amount of junk that I was getting. So, I tend to be motivated by problems that I have now, or that I anticipate that our customers, and people will have in general, given the emerging technology trends.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And I approach it, not just from a use-base perspective, understanding situations that will likely happen, but also try to generalize a bit and provide a more theoretical and generalizable foundation. Donald Stokes wrote a fascinating book about basic science and technology innovation and he talks about Pasteur\u2019s quadrant, which is use-based, fundamental research. And I characterize myself as living in Pasteur\u2019s quadrant.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: That\u2019s a good place to live.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: I love the idea that you talk about things that frustrate you and you want to solve them because if it frustrates you, it\u2019s probably frustrating me, too. And so, I\u2019m glad to know that you are approaching it from that perspective.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Well actually, as an HCI person, I think the other thing we need to constantly remind ourselves of is that we\u2019re not the typical person. In fact, when we started this spam work, most people didn\u2019t get a lot of spam emails. I\u2019m motivated by things that frustrate me. I try to understand how broadly applicable those ideas are. But there are things that frustrate me that, if I spent, you know, a career solving them, would not benefit lots of other people. But my work is really very much motivated by pain points that I see either in myself or in others or that I anticipate seeing in technology.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Well, as your work is anchored in information retrieval and search, let\u2019s do a little \u201cthen and now\u201d on the search landscape\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Okay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: \u2026because contrary to what we experience today, high-quality search results were not always a click away. So, give us a snapshot of the field twenty years ago and tell us how things have evolved, in part because of the work you\u2019ve done, over the ensuing decades.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Yeah, you are absolutely right. If you\u2019re under twenty years of age, you have probably not lived in a world where you don\u2019t have, at-your-fingertips-access to an increasingly broad set of information, 24\/7. Even in, let\u2019s say, the mid-90s, the first web search engines were just starting. And by web search engine, I mean a system that crawls for content, indexes that content and provides it in a browser. We clearly had libraries. We had library catalogues. But the ability to have, at your fingertips, an amazing breadth of information, is really, fairly new. Some of the early search engines, things like Infoseek, Alta Vista, Lycos, were operating in a very different time. Lycos, I think, in the mid-90s, indexed a few hundred thousand web pages. They had a thousand or two thousand queries a day. Fast forward to today, and there are billions of web pages, billions of queries per day. And so, the world has evolved, you know, a lot in terms of size. It\u2019s evolved a lot in terms of diversity of content.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Hmm.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Mostly the web then was HTML pages. It wasn\u2019t videos, it wasn\u2019t images, it wasn\u2019t news. And so, more and more, a variety of different kinds of information are there. The depth of the analysis that\u2019s provided has changed tremendously. We used to just look at simple key words. More and more, we\u2019re going beyond key words to do a deeper understanding of the language, the objects, the entities. And think about something like your phone, when you\u2019re on the go. You\u2019re asking queries verbally, often.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: That\u2019s just such a far cry from typing in 2.1 words into a rectangle\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026on the screen. How it\u2019s presented, how you iterate through it, it\u2019s becoming much more of a dialogue. So, the world has gone from a situation where search was really this arcane skill. So, you needed almost a graduate degree in library science to \u2013 there were librarians. We went to them and\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Absolutely!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026asked for information \u2013 to a case where, today, search is just ubiquitous. You expect it to be there and when it\u2019s not, it\u2019s incredibly frustrating. So, we\u2019ve gone from something which was a real specialty skill to something that\u2019s just a core fabric of everything we do. You use it to find information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: You use it to buy things, to learn about medical conditions, to learn about household or electronic troubleshooting\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: To find someone you are looking for\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Exactly, yeah. Sure! And that was available in different ways\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Absolutely!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026not through web search engines. The ubiquity, I think, makes it more exciting for me in many ways. It\u2019s more important to understand people, what they\u2019re trying to accomplish and, really, to help them generate, make sense of, and find information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Well that\u2019s an amazing segue into what you\u2019re actually doing about it because there\u2019s a lot that went on behind-the-scenes, from being a very specialty thing to something that I can use very, very easily every day. And in fact, my sister\u2019s three-year-old grandchild can do it better than I can.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: What do they call a magazine? An iPad that doesn\u2019t work.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: That\u2019s right!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: So, I want to talk specifically today about three areas where your research contributions have, as you say, built bridges among several communities, notably human computer interaction, information retrieval, or IR, and web. So, first, let\u2019s start with the work you did way back at Bell Labs, before you even came to Microsoft Research, in what you referred to a little bit earlier as latent semantic indexing, or LSI. So, this work addresses what\u2019s known as \u201cvocabulary mismatch\u201d in IR systems. You\u2019ll unpack that for us.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: I will.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Explain the problem first, how you addressed it, and then tell us why this work from the 1990s is still relevant and highly cited today\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: The last century.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah, right? A century ago\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: In graduate school, I pursued research interest in cognitive science, so a lot of my work there revolved around building models of how people learn and retrieve information from their own memories. And when I moved to Bell Labs and really started interacting much more with what was becoming a very ubiquitous computer industry at the time, I got very interested in how people find information from external sources. So, not their own heads, but other people, computers\u2026 And one of the problems that kept coming up over and over and over again was this kind of impedance mismatch between the way that I seek information and the way that you, as an author, might have written that information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Mmm.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: It was very acute at Bell Labs because I was trying to learn the Unix operating system and I wanted to find the function that allowed me to find a word in a document that I had. And it was called GREP, for Generate Regular Expression. Who, in their right mind, would have done that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: An engineer!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Well, somebody who did not understand the broad set of users who might wind up using those systems.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And so, there are two aspects to the problem, and they\u2019re both due to fundamental characteristics of how people generate text. The first is called synonymy. That we use many different words to describe the same object. So, you might refer to a medical professional as a doctor or a physician. Apple means fruit, and in the last forty years or so, it\u2019s meant a computer system.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Even people, like Michael Jordan\u2026 There\u2019s a very famous computer scientist named Michael Jordan. There\u2019s also a more famous basketball player named Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Sad for the computer scientist\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: No, no\u2026! Actually, we take care of him in web search engines!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: I bet you do.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And so, one problem is that there are lots of ways of saying the same thing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And the other problem, which I just mentioned, is that the same word can have many different meanings. And both of those present problems for retrieval. I think the key insight in latent sematic indexing was that we tried to represent words not as isolated tokens, but as a richer representation of the context in which they appear. So, we projected words into a much lower dimensional space and the impact was, it brought together words that shared similar context. So, \u201cphysician\u201d and \u201cdoctor\u201d occur in the same company.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And that allowed those words to be very similar in this reduced dimension, or what we call semantic space. There\u2019s been a tremendous resurgence of interest in these word embeddings, or context embeddings, in the last five years or so. Many of the modern word embedding techniques, whether it\u2019s Word2vec or GloVe or BERT or GPT2, really share the same goal of uncovering latent structure. That problem still exists because people write and read and understand text. And there\u2019s tremendous variability in that. What has changed, tremendously, are the data resources. It\u2019s easy to get billions of web pages, hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia pages. The computational capabilities have increased and really the representational richness of the models have changed tremendously, by orders and orders of magnitude.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And so, I think there\u2019s been a resurgence in rethinking what you can do with some of these approaches.<\/p>\n<p>(music plays)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Well, another area in which you and your colleagues have made a significant contribution is in the area of context in search. Context in anything makes a difference with language\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: \u2026and this is integrally linked to the idea of personalization, which is a buzz word in almost every area of computer science research these days: how can we give people a \u201cvalet service\u201d experience with their technical devices and systems? So, tell us about the technical approaches you\u2019ve taken on context in search, and how they\u2019ve enabled machines to better recognize or understand the rich contextual signals, as you call them, that can help humans improve their access to information?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: If you take a step back and consider what a web search engine is, it\u2019s incredibly difficult to understand what somebody is looking for given, typically, two to three words. These two to three words appear in a search box and what you try to do is match those words against billions of documents. That\u2019s a really daunting challenge. That challenge becomes a little easier if you can understand things about where the query is coming from. It doesn\u2019t fall from the sky, right? It\u2019s issued by a real live human being. They have searched for things in the longer term, maybe more acutely in the current session. It\u2019s situated in a particular location in time. All of those signals are what we call context\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026that help understand why somebody might be searching and, more importantly, what you might do to help them, what they might mean by that. You know, again, it\u2019s much easier to understand queries if you have a little bit of context about it. If I search for Michael Jordan, and you know I\u2019m a computer scientist, that provides you a signal. If, today, I type in Hong Kong Airport, I probably don\u2019t want to know about all the concession stores in the Hong Kong Airport, I want to know about ongoing protests there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: A lot of searches are motivated by things that happen in the real world. And so that\u2019s what context means, just trying to understand a little bit about where the request is coming from, what larger task it might be embedded in, what contextual situation it might be embedded in. If you have a single web search engine and you return exactly the same results for the same query to everyone, at every point in time, in every location, you\u2019re going to have suboptimal performance.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: All right. So, going a little deeper on the technical approaches that you\u2019ve taken\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: \u2026to bring context. I\u2019m leaving traces. Wherever I go, online, I\u2019ll leave a little footprint or fingerprint, and that becomes part of this inferred data about who I am, what I\u2019m doing. And like you said, if I searched the Hong Kong airport maybe six months ago, I wouldn\u2019t get the same results today.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right, newsworthy today, right. What you just highlighted is what I would call contextualization. So, in that case, there are spikes in queries. Queries do not occur uniformly over time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And so, when a query starts spiking, things like Hong Kong airport or Hong Kong in general, you better figure out what\u2019s going on. In many cases it\u2019s driven by external events.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: That\u2019s not you as an individual, it\u2019s the aggregate of people who are approaching search engines, asking different queries over time. So, you can think about it at an aggregate level. Um, you know, at a more personal level, or in a session, if you\u2019ve asked a query that\u2019s related to basketball, and then you ask about Michael Jordan\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Mmm-hmmm.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026that gives you a hint about how to handle what might be, otherwise, a very ambiguous query.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Well, a third area of contribution I want to talk about has to do with the temporal dynamics of information. This rests on the notion that information isn\u2019t static and when you say it out loud it seems kind of like a no-brainer. Of course, it isn\u2019t static! But the tools we\u2019ve traditionally used tend to focus on snapshots of information rather than the dynamic nature of our information. So, tell us again, what technical approaches you\u2019ve explored to help people interact with the reality of dynamic information.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Okay, so, you know, as you said, the world is constantly changing around us, whether it\u2019s the world of information or the physical world in which we live. In web search, what\u2019s changing is the content. The web is not static. We\u2019re crawling new content all the time. The questions people ask are changing as a function of events that are going on in the world, as a function of events in their personal lives. And what\u2019s most interesting is that what\u2019s relevant changes. So, let me just give you an example to ground the pervasiveness. If you typed in the query \u201cUS Open,\u201d do you mean last year or this year? It\u2019s an event.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Or do I mean tennis of golf?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Exactly. Even if you said US Open 2019, what\u2019s relevant depends on where you are relative to that event. So right now, you\u2019re probably not interested in the scores and results because they don\u2019t exist. You want to buy tickets. During the event, you care about the results. And we\u2019ve done a couple of things to try to address that. One is on the algorithmic front. So, we\u2019ve tried to model things like how the content on web pages changes. We also model how people\u2019s interactions change, the queries they issue, what\u2019s clicked on. And by combining those in a kind of time-series analysis, you can understand how to weight new information versus older information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Search engines learn from people as they interact with things, what\u2019s relevant to a particular query. But that means new information is disadvantaged because it doesn\u2019t have that historical interaction data. And so, by being smart and modeling things as a time series, knowing how things change over time, you can do a much better job of finding information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: We also built what I think is a really fun system. It\u2019s still one of my favorite systems. It was a browser plug-in called Diff-IE. Not a very well-named system. I complained about GREP earlier. This is not a lot better.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Still coming up with dumb names.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right, exactly. This was a prototype we built to help people understand how the world was changing around them. And what I mean by that is, the system, all in the browser, as you visited a web page, would look at how that was different than the version of the page that was in the web cache and highlight those changes to you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Wow!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: So\u2026 Yeah, it was totally a fun system. So, imagine going to a new site and you\u2019d see what the changes were, not relative to what a news editor thought, but since you had last been there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Sure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: If you hadn\u2019t been there in two days, it might be what the headlines were. If you were following a story, it would just show you what was different. It really brought to light for people how information changes in ways that they had never seen before.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: So, if I would go to somebody\u2019s web page, I might see new publications highlighted. I might see a new job title. And that really brought the dynamics to people in ways that were, really, previously hidden. And so that was a really fun project that touched not so much on the underlying algorithms, but how we can help people understand and experience that change.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: The interesting thing about the temporal dynamics of things\u2026 I mean, just yesterday, my husband came home, and he said, there was a huge accident on 405. So, I go and search \u201caccident on 405.\u201d Well\u2026 5 days ago? 7 years ago?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: I-405 in California? It\u2019s like, there\u2019s still a lot of work that needs to be done on this temporal dynamics thing\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Absolutely. But, and that\u2019s a really interesting trade off between things that are, a priori, really important, that you want to make sure to continue to retrieve, and the dynamics of information. In that case, it\u2019s also possible that the content wasn\u2019t there. But the fact that you thought about going to web search suggests that you expect to find that kind of information there. And as you say, there\u2019s a long way to go in a lot of this, so\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Well, you know where it led me was to the Washington State DOT Twitter feed, which is immediate. You know, somebody\u2019s on that but it doesn\u2019t hit the web as news, necessarily, if it\u2019s just happened in the last half hour.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right. That gets to the point of trying to integrate different sources of information. But you need to stay on top of that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: How do web search engines decide what to crawl and what frequency to crawl it at, or is some of the information pushed? This highlights a couple of different dimensions. One is getting the data in the first place.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And then how you take all this stuff from web pages to news to maybe Twitter feeds to structured data like Wikipedia feeds and compose those into an environment or representation that can really help people. And that\u2019s much harder if you\u2019re on a phone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Oh, yeah!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Because if you have a big screen in front of you, you can show a lot of information, you can allow people\u2019s visual systems to quickly scan it. If you\u2019re on a phone, you need to take your best guess, iterate, start a conversation with people. It\u2019s a much more temporal processing of the information than a spatial one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Also, you look at the generational aspect of this. My daughter rarely goes on her computer unless she\u2019s doing something for school. She\u2019s on her phone. That is her primary source.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: And so that data point is got to be where a lot of researcher\u2019s brains are heading is, well, what is the mobile-first generation, how are we going to adapt something innovative that we did into this milieu?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: The world\u2019s constantly changing, and you need to evolve. We\u2019ve clearly gone off as an industry search and even beyond that from the desktop into the real world.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And I think that raises all sorts of interesting opportunities as well as challenges.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: We\u2019re not even going to talk about HoloLens or any of the other wearable technologies that I\u2019ve had other researchers in the booth about saying hey, even your phone, looking at your rectangle, is going to be obsolete sooner than you think, so\u2026 Susan, I can find almost any piece of general information by searching the web, but my own information is fragmented, it\u2019s scattered everywhere on apps, bookmarks, email folders, devices, etc. Tell us how your current interest in non-web search applications is going to help people like me access my personal information better.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right. It\u2019s interesting, I think the search industry, for a while, was focused, actually, on finding information on your desktop, finding information in email. And with the advent of the web, a lot of public information moved online. And you\u2019ve seen a tremendous set of innovations in that arena. But search is really much more prevalent and I\u2026 a particular pain point for me \u2013 I told you I was motivated\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026by things that annoy me \u2013 are that, uh, you know, we haven\u2019t done as good a job of helping people make sense of their own, kind of, personal space of information, is the way I like to think about it. In many ways, it\u2019s stuff you\u2019ve seen before, stuff you\u2019ve interacted with. It\u2019s web pages, it\u2019s email, it\u2019s documents, apps of all kinds. There are so many times when you say I know I saw this article or I saw this photo, where is it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah, was it on Twitter, was it on the web, was it on Instagram, was it on Facebook?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And there\u2019s no reason that you should have to remember that. And so, I think the challenge is providing people with unified access to that information without necessarily making copies of it everywhere. At Microsoft, we are certainly working on it from within the Microsoft ecosystem. It\u2019s increasingly easy to find not just files, but shared files, email, with the click of a button. In Research, Shane Williams and others have developed a prototype called TaskEasy that tries to improve that. But it\u2019s an area that I think still has a lot of opportunity for improvement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Let me ask you a little off-script question.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Sure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Because this is a frustration of mine. When I do a web search and I misspell something by accident, it tells me \u201cdid you mean\u2026\u201d or \u201clooking for results for\u2026\u201d or\u2026 On other websites, if I spell your name wrong, no results. I get nothing\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: It\u2019s a pain point. And the same was true in web search twenty years ago. If you mistyped something, you didn\u2019t get anything. One of the\u2026 You didn\u2019t. Or you got some \u2013 somebody else who randomly typed things in the same way. One of the things that search engines and lots of other web services do is understand what people are looking for in the ways in which they are doing it. Web search engines have gotten better at searching, not because the algorithms are better, but because you can observe, in aggregate, lots of people searching for things, failing to find them. There were some really interesting observations that folks published very early on about web search. They were things that were unexpected to people who were in the search industry. We all thought that people would go to web search and type in these beautiful informational requests. The most common queries at that time, in the late 90s, were things like eBay, Hotmail, Pok\u00e9mon, weather, horoscope\u2026 They weren\u2019t asking for information, they were using the web to navigate to things.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Ahhh.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Getting back to your spelling example, there were many queries \u2013 things like, I think, Abercrombie and Fitch, Arnold Schwarzenegger \u2013 that are misspelled more than they\u2019re spelled correctly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: But it\u2019s learning by people typing things incorrectly, looking at their reformulations and then figuring out how to improve the spelling correction\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026to handle those cases.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: We\u2019ve talked about personalization\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: \u2026which in theory is something we all want, but there\u2019s always some big trade-offs here. We\u2019ll get to the pitfalls in a second, and the discussion of the downside of large-scale behavior analysis. But right now, tell us about the potential of large-scale behavioral analysis that helps you contextualize things.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: One of the things that\u2019s happened over the last two decades is that web-based services \u2013 whether it\u2019s a website that you go to, travel sites, shopping sites \u2013 web-based services like this, because they see lots and lots of information, have provided this really new lens onto how people are interacting with their systems. They provide insights about how you can improve those systems. This is a lens onto people\u2019s behavior that we just never had before. Even when I joined Microsoft, when I first joined, folks from Office Help came and said, help us fix Office Help Search. And so, my first question was, what are the most common queries? And they go, we don\u2019t know. What are people looking for? We don\u2019t know. The reason they didn\u2019t know is Search for Office Help happened on your desktop machine. All the Office Help was downloaded to your desktop. All of the searching was done on your desktop. We knew nothing about what people were asking or whether they were being successful.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Because your desktop was Las Vegas, whatever happened there, stayed there.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Exactly. My desktop is a little cleaner than Las Vegas, but yeah!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Good to know.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And the minute they moved Office Search onto the web, you learned all sorts of things. And so, by knowing what people are seeking, doing, we can create the relevant content. We can create the relevant algorithms. And so, this has been an amazingly rich lens, this virtuous feedback cycle between delivering content and using it, to understand what it is that people are looking for and where the failure points are. It\u2019s hard to understate how much systems have really changed because of that.<\/p>\n<p>(music plays)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right. Well, like a recurring nightmare, here we are again at \u201cwhat could possibly go wrong?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: And you\u2019ve done a lot and seen a lot over the course of your career. One thing that\u2019s of great interest to me is this idea that, in order to help us get better search results \u2013 and I want that. I want personalization, on the one hand \u2013 but the things I have to give up about my own personal information, my privacy, I\u2019m giving up to the web to help you make my search better. So, talk about the potential pitfalls here, because I know you are thinking about them. What keeps you up at night?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Yeah, sure. In general, there\u2019s really a need to balance, in a very thoughtful and responsible way, the benefits that accrue from seeing various kinds of interaction, understanding how people are interacting with systems, and the potential risks for storing information about individuals that enable these services. For some of the things that we talked about, in terms of spelling correction, the fact that there were navigational queries that people had not anticipated, those happen at the aggregate level. And frankly, a lot of the insights happen at the aggregate level, or group level. And some of them happen at the individual level, but many of them happen at a much higher level. We all make these tradeoffs every day. You know, I give credit card information to some services because it\u2019s easier for me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Mmm-hmm.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: I want to save my purchase history in some places because it\u2019s much easier to go back and refine things. And I think, you know, as a company, Microsoft is tremendously invested in protecting people\u2019s privacy, the security of information that people entrust us with. So, I think, as an industry, what we need to do is work, first and foremost, to protect whatever data we have. Also, to be clearer on what information is being stored, be transparent about it, and provide people with ways of opting out of that. When I type in the beginning of a name, I would like it to auto complete.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Sure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: When I move to a new computer where that\u2019s not the case, I find it frustrating. And again, there are ways that data can be stored over different time horizons. It can be aggregated and anonymized. I think search engines, in particular, but really almost any web service, tries to strike the right balance between understanding things at a very fine level and then aggregating things where that\u2019s relevant and appropriate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: All right. It\u2019s story time. I happen to know you didn\u2019t start out thinking, I\u2019m going to be a computer scientist or the Deputy Lab Director of MSR AI. So, tell us how it all began for you, maybe not back to when you were a baby, but, you know, kind of academically, and how you landed here at MSR in your leadership role today?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Well, what you just said is certainly true. Microsoft didn\u2019t exist when I was in high school and in graduate school\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Me neither!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026so I had no aspirations of being there! If I did, I would be incredibly wealthy right now. Um, yeah. When I look back on my career, I think it\u2019s fun to reflect on a few pivot points, because the road from where I was as a high school student and undergraduate in Maine, to Redmond, Washington, and the tech industry, is not one that I had planned, from end-to-end, and I was able and lucky enough to be in environments where I could take some risks and take some turns. So, let me just tell you a few of them\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Yeah!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026that really stand out in my mind. I started college as a math major intending to go to law school. I wanted to do environmental law. I took a course when I was a junior called Mathematical Psychology which was a course that talked about how people learn information, how they recall information, and how you can precisely describe the evolution of learning and retrieval of information from memory. And I was just smitten. I just thought it was the most fascinating thing, blending algorithms with the ability to understand people and how they worked. And so, I just decided that I was going to go to psychology graduate school. I had no idea what it was. My parents were even more concerned, but I did it. I had a blast doing it. And then, when I finished my PhD, I had every intent of teaching at a university. And when I was looking for jobs, I got a call from Bell Labs. And they had just started the industry\u2019s first Human Computer Interaction lab. And I was still all set on going to a university and my undergraduate advisor called and said, I hear you are going to Bell Labs. And I said, no, I don\u2019t think so. He literally said, you ought to have your head examined! And I asked why, and he made a very good point which was, you really have nothing to lose by this, and a lot to gain. You\u2019re at the beginning of something that could be a really important future direction. And, if you decide you don\u2019t like it, you can leave, and two years later you\u2019ll be better off than you are now in looking for jobs. And almost forty years later, you can say that it suited me very well! And my transition from Bell Labs to Microsoft was also based on opportunities that I decided to seize. We had had a post doc at Bells Labs who was a product manager in Office at the time on FindFast, and he said, hey, Microsoft Research is looking for somebody in information retrieval. I told them they should reach out to you. And again, I said, I\u2019m not looking to move. But I came, I really enjoyed meeting the people. The problems, the scale of problems, I could just see being very, very different from what I had.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Mmm.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: And again, now twenty-two years later, it\u2019s been, maybe, one of the best decisions in my life, in part because what I\u2019m interested in, helping people create, find, manage, make sense of information, is exactly what Microsoft is about.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: So, every question I have, every innovation I have, has really natural outlets. So, I find that really sort of exciting and fun. MSR is also just this amazingly vibrant intellectual environment that I love, people from lots of different perspectives coming together.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Well, as we close \u2013 and I\u2019m sad that we\u2019re closing, because you\u2019re fun \u2013 there are a handful of people who\u2019ve really earned the right through length, depth and quality of career to give advice to people, and you are one of those people. Let\u2019s frame the final question in terms of your leadership role in cultivating the next generation of talent here at MSR. Tell our audience, from your perspective, what\u2019s on the horizon in the field and why is now a good time to be a researcher?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: When I think back on my career and I look at other successful people, I think we all share some traits that I think are important to think about. One is, have a purpose, but also be willing to seize a new opportunity. And I just told you several times\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Right.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: \u2026how really pivotal points in my life came from having a true north, but also be willing to take not the obvious and straight path to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: So, Jack Sparrow\u2019s compass?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Wherever.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: No, no, and actually not wherever. I had a goal, but I was also willing to deviate when there were opportunities.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: Sure.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: The second is to be passionate about what you do. I think I\u2019m incredibly fortunate to be in an environment where my passion and what people pay me to do align, but, in any endeavor, you\u2019re going to work hard, you\u2019re going to work long hours. Find something that speaks to you. It might be an application area. It might be a particular theoretical framework, a methodology. But make sure that, at the end of the day, when you\u2019ve worked really hard, you\u2019re proud of that outcome. And perhaps the most important thing is to persevere, be persistent in what you do. There is no straight path to an aspiration and how you get there. And I think it\u2019s often deceptive because students will see this brilliant talk by somebody who is very well-known in the field, and go, oh my gosh, this person is just brilliant. Sure, they may be brilliant, but they\u2019ve also worked hard behind-the-scenes. They\u2019ve tried lots of things that failed. And I think it\u2019s really important to stick with it and learn from failures, but also celebrate successes. In terms of, I think, some of the interesting areas moving forward, let me just mention three. One of them is that I think, more and more, information retrieval is moving from helping people find information to helping people get things done. I\u2019ve spent a lot of my life thinking about search. It is nobody\u2019s end goal. You don\u2019t get up in the morning and say, I\u2019m going to search for the next two minutes. You\u2019re trying to accomplish a task. And search is a means by which you do that. And I think we shouldn\u2019t ever forget that. So really, trying to go from finding information to using that information in a way that helps you solve the problem. The other one we mentioned briefly before, it\u2019s moving off the desktop into the world. More and more, our systems are interacting. There\u2019s this interesting mix of digital and physical worlds. And I guess the last is a personal one. I think there are really interesting opportunities, moving forward, to combine insights from computation, cognitive science and neuroscience. It\u2019s an area that I haven\u2019t had as much time to spend as I would like, but I think there\u2019s some interesting things coming together in that space.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Host: You know, I\u2019m glad that you\u2019re passionate and persistent about what you\u2019re doing because it\u2019s helped my life in many, many ways. You are right, I don\u2019t get up and say, I\u2019m going to go search. I have to find something, and I need that click to be the one I want. Susan Dumais, thank you so much, FINALLY, for coming on the podcast!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Susan Dumais: Thanks Gretchen. It\u2019s really been fun to talk with you.<\/p>\n<p>(music plays)<\/p>\n<p>To learn more about Dr. Susan Dumais and how the search for better search goes on, visit <a href=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/\">Microsoft.com\/research<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Susan Dumais knows you have things to do, and if you need help finding stuff to get them done (and you probably do) then her long and illustrious career in search technologies has been worth it. Situated firmly in Louis Pasteur\u2019s quadrant of the research grid (the square where you answer \u201cyes\u201d to both the quest for fundamental understanding and use-based applications) the Microsoft Technical Fellow, and Deputy Lab Director of MSR AI, has made finding information the focus of her career, and has probably made your life a little more productive in the process.<br \/>\nToday, Dr. Dumais tells us how the landscape of information retrieval has evolved over the past twenty years; reminds us that queries don\u2019t fall from the sky but are grounded in the context of real people, real events and real time; talks about her current interest in non-web-based search (or how I can easily put my hands on my own digital belongings) and reveals what apples and Michael Jordan have in common with search research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38022,"featured_media":608583,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/48972723\/","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-author-ordering":[],"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[240054],"tags":[],"research-area":[13556,13554,13555],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-608568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msr-podcast","msr-research-area-artificial-intelligence","msr-research-area-human-computer-interaction","msr-research-area-search-information-retrieval","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/48972723\/","podcast_episode":"","msr_research_lab":[199565],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[],"related-projects":[],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","featured_image_thumbnail":"<img width=\"960\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-960x540.png\" class=\"img-object-cover\" alt=\"Susan Sumais wearing glasses and smiling at the camera\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-960x540.png 960w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1066x600.png 1066w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-655x368.png 655w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-343x193.png 343w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-640x360.png 640w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788-1280x720.png 1280w, https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Susan-Dumais_Podcast_Site_09_2019_1400x788.png 1400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/>","byline":"","formattedDate":"September 18, 2019","formattedExcerpt":"Dr. Susan Dumais knows you have things to do, and if you need help finding stuff to get them done (and you probably do) then her long and illustrious career in search technologies has been worth it. Situated firmly in Louis Pasteur\u2019s quadrant of the&hellip;","locale":{"slug":"en_us","name":"English","native":"","english":"English"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608568"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":896337,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608568\/revisions\/896337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"msr-event-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-event-type?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"msr-promo-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-promo-type?post=608568"},{"taxonomy":"msr-podcast-series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-podcast-series?post=608568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}