OKI and Recruit Selected for Japan's Government Project with their Laddering Search Service for the Second Consecutive Year
The two companies aim to develop a practical next-generation search service by drawing out user needs through dialogues
TOKYO, July 28, 2008 -- Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. (TSE: 6703) today announced that its "Laddering(*1) Search Service," jointly developed with Recruit Co., Ltd., has been selected to be part of the "2008 Information Grand Voyage Project" by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for the second consecutive year. Laddering Search Service enables users to find what they are looking for on the web through dialogues with a computer.
"We are pleased to be selected again this year for the nation's project to develop next generation searching and analytic technologies," said Yuichiro Hiranuma, President of Ubiquitous Service Platform Company at OKI. "Working with Recruit, we will be making improvements to our existing technology and aim to develop a practical dialogue engine to make Internet search easier for users."
"We will continue to combine Recruit's strengths in laddering methods with OKI's experience in natural language processing, communication, technical term extraction, and machine learning technologies to offer a next-generation dialogue-based search service," said Shigehiro Kato, Executive Manager of Digital Solution Group, HR Company/Metropolitan at Recruit. "We will include more sophisticated functions in the service this year and plan to conduct field trials on job search sites."
Background of Laddering Search Service and last year's achievements
Internet users are still having a difficult time finding the exact service or content they are looking for using keyword search alone. This is because each website uses different names, expressions and formats for the service or the content they offer.
On the other hand, retail stores are hiring concierges at their stores, who have a wide range of knowledge of products and services, to offer excellent service to their customers. Even when customers cannot express exactly what they are looking for, a concierge can help them find the product or service they need. As consumption becomes more sophisticated, the need for such service is expected to increase. However, this is a service provided directly by human beings, which entails a great deal of labor cost, and is not suitable to cope with today's vastly increasing needs of high quality and more complicated services.
OKI and Recruit created the Laddering Search Service scheme, in which the computer asks questions and users answer them, to help the users find exactly what they are looking for from a vast amount of services and content. The service was selected as one of the model services for the "Information Grand Voyage Project" last fiscal year and was implemented as a field trial on a job search website for approximately 800 users who were looking to change jobs. As a result, an average of 33 dialogues was made with a user before he or she reached the target (one question from the computer and the answer from a user being counted as one dialogue) and on average, 32 attributions of information were extracted from a user. From a survey regarding this service, 24% of the users found that having a dialogue with the computer helped them identify even needs that they were originally not aware of. After the trial, many of the trial users had high expectations towards the service, with 54% of the users answering they would like to use the service immediately, and 75% within 2 years.
Plans for this fiscal year
Based on the issues raised and dialogue logs collected from last year's field trial, the OKI and Recruit aim to develop a dialogue function using an ontology(*2) system, a high-end dialogue strategy function to analyze user emotions, satisfaction and trust, and tools to accumulate domain knowledge efficiently. The two companies will also conduct a field trial of this new version on job search websites again.
Laddering Search Service can be applied to a wide range of industries where differences in knowledge and needs between users and service/content providers exist, such as sites for job search, shopping, financial services, travel, government, medical/healthcare, broadcasting and movies. OKI also plans to offer its own service that will bring together user needs and service/content provider offerings by extracting the exact user need through dialogues. In addition to this service, OKI is considering offering system construction, consultation, etc to service and content providers worldwide.
OKI described the system development and announced the results of last year's field trial at The Information Processing Society of Japan Special Interest Group on Natural Language Processing Meeting held in Hokkaido Prefecture, Japan on July 18.
Glossary
- *1：Laddering
A method to extract user needs and value through repeated cycles of question and answers.
- *2：Ontology
A network structure expressing concepts of words and the relationships between those concepts.
[Reference] Diagram of Laddering Search Service
About Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
Founded in 1881, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. is Japan's first telecommunications manufacturer, with its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. OKI provides top-quality products, technologies and solutions to its customers through its info-telecom system business, semiconductor business and printer business. All three businesses function as a collective force to create exciting new products and technologies that satisfy a spectrum of customer needs in various markets. Visit OKI's global web site at http://www.oki.com/.
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