Search Service from OKI and Recruit Picked by Japanese Government Project

The “Laddering Search Service,” jointly developed by Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. and Recruit Co. Ltd, has been selected to be a part of the “2008 Information Grand Voyage Project” by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for the second consecutive year.

 

The Laddering Search Service allows users to find what they are looking for on the Web through dialogues with a computer. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd., provides products, technologies and solutions to its customers, through its info-telecom system business, semiconductor business and printer business.

 

“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,” said Yuichiro Hiranuma, president of Ubiquitous Service Platform Company, in a statement.

 

The Laddering Search Service scheme was created by OKI (News - Alert) and Recruit to help users find exactly what they are looking for from a vast amount of services and content. In this scheme the computer will ask questions which the user will have to answer. The service was been selected as one of the model services for the “Information Grand Voyage Project” last fiscal year. It was also implemented as a field trial on a job search Web site for users who are looking to change jobs.

 

In this second project, an average of 33 dialogues was completed with a user before he or she reached the target. According to a survey conducted for this service, 24 percent  of the participants found that having a dialogue with the computer helped them to identify needs they were not originally aware of.

 

OKI and Recruit are planning to develop a dialogue function using an ontology system based on the dialogue logs collected from last year’s field trial. This system is a high-end dialogue strategy function to analyze user emotions, satisfaction and trust, and tools to accumulate domain knowledge. Laddering Search Service can be applied to sites for job search, shopping, financial services, travel, government, medical, broadcasting and movies.