IUI 2015 • Keynotes March 29–April 1, 2015, Atlanta, GA, USA

Blurring of the Boundary Between

Interactive Search and Recommendation
Ed H. Chi
Google, Inc.
Mountain View, California, USA
chi@acm.org

Abstract
Search and recommendation engines are increasingly more
intelligent. They have become more personalized and
social as well as more interactive. No longer just offering
ten blue links, search engines have increasingly been
integrated with task and item recommenders directly, for
example, to offer news, movie, music, and dining
suggestions. Vice versa, recommendation systems have
increasingly became more search-like by offering
capabilities that enable users to tune and direct
recommendation results instantly.
As the two technologies evolve toward each other, there is
increasingly a blurring of the boundary between these two
approaches to interactive information seeking. On the
search side, this is driven by the merging of question
answering capabilities with search, led by systems like Short Bio
Google Now and Apple Siri that move search toward Ed H. Chi is a Staff Research Scientist at Google, leading a
intelligent personal assistants. On the recommendation team in social computing and recommender research. With
side, there has been a merging of techniques from not just over 30 patents and over 90 publications, he is known for
keyword search but also faceted search, along with user- research in Web and online social sites, and the effects of
based and item-based collaborative filtering techniques social signals on user behavior, as well as past research on
and other more proactive recommenders. web data mining and user modeling, information
visualization, and crowdsourcing. Previous to Google, he
This blurring has resulted in both critical re-thinking about was the Area Manager and a Principal Scientist at Palo Alto
not just how to architect the systems by merging and Research Center's Augmented Social Cognition Area. He
sharing backend components common to both types of completed three degrees (B.S., M.S., and Ph.D.) in 6.5
systems, but also how to structure the user interactions and years from University of Minnesota. He was recently
experiences. recognized as an ACM Distinguished Scientist. In his spare
ACM Classification time, Ed is an avid photographer and snowboarder.
H.3.5. On-line Information Services; H.1.2 User/Machine Systems:
Human information processing.

Author Keywords: Search Engine; Recommendation;

Interaction.

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IUI 2015, March 29–April 1, 2015, Atlanta, GA, USA.
ACM 978-1-4503-3306-1/15/03.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2678025.2700997