Dear Jonas,

Thank you for your question.

Jakob's findings are relevant to PhD students for three reasons:

1. From observation, PhD students in design are notoriously bad at searching
for information.  Similarly,  from observation design researchers and
designers in general are poor at searching for information. From
Observation, this seems to be particularly true for those in design fields
associated with Art and Design.

2.  Teaching skills of searching for information is not straightforward or
easy because many people feel that they already know how to search well
enough. By observation and test over the last 15 years this is not generally
true.

3. There is a lot of information about sharpening search skills and yet a
lack  of formally-undertaken research findings about how good individuals'
search skills are, and  typical weaknesses.

Jakob's findings and analysis are directly useful to helping all of us see
gaps in our searching skills. It also has value for those researching the
design of products/services that involve users undertaking searches.

There are many methods of searching better on Google. Some years ago I
devised a 'Systematic Review using Google' and people on this list offered
some useful comments. A description of the method is available at:
http://www.love.com.au/index.php/component/resource/article/4-Blog/30-system
atic-review-using-google-research-method.html 

Best wishes,
Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Löwgren
Jonas
Sent: Monday, 11 April 2011 11:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Problems with search skills -useful for PhD design researchers

> Jakob Neilsen's recent Alertbox describes  a problem with search  
> strategy
> that's probably relevant to many PhD students in Design.

Dear Terry,

Just curious: Why do you think that the problem of users relying on  
individual pages listed by search engines (instead of finding better  
ways to tackle problems) would be relevant to many PhD students in  
Design?

Jonas Löwgren