The biggest problem on today's web sites and intranets is findability. Even as large companies have scaled up their investment in search and intranet development, one key ingredient is missing: the people. But people are present everywhere, people are social, and people leverage social strategies to find information all the time — at work, with colleagues, to solve real problems. Unfortunately, this social element is missing in most enterprise search systems. What can we do to about this?Social search has the potential to improve search practices beyond what is possible with traditional informational retrieval algorithms. There exist several models of social search, which could be incorporated into enterprise and conventional search systems. In this workshop, we will frame these relevant models of social search in the context of a real world problem, and will discuss the potential benefits for both users as well as organizations.Enterprise Social Search is a one-day workshop to teach the tools necessary for designing good search experiences within large organizations. The workshop will cover how to think about the power of social networks, how to design for search, the benefits of social search, what makes enterprise search unique, as well as the design studio methodology. We will begin with a formal presentation around social search efforts to date, synthesize findings from a number of research reports, and illustrate our ideas with concept maps and sketches. The second half of the day includes hands-on learning, exploring, and designing enterprise social solutions using the Design Studio methodology.
