Vegard Sandvold
Wolfram Alpha – Re-Inventing the Command Line
The hype has passed, and it’s clear that Wolfram Alpha isn’t the new Google killer as initially anticipated. But what is this new computational knowledge engine, and how shall we use it? It seems to me that we have been given some sort of a command line tool for a comprehensive information database. The... Read More »
Enterprise Search – Information Accessibility by Design or Technology?
You’re the user experience designer hired in to give shape to a new enterprise search solution. Your client has already decided upon a technology vendor, and has purchased a license. The responsibility now rests with you to provide employees or customers with the best possible information access. Will you design the solution around the... Read More »
Mediating Information – What Does That Mean?
I’m very pleased with the discussions sparked by my last post about designing a topology of search concepts. Several people have raised questions about the 2 dimensions I selected as a way of characterizing search concepts in terms of business goals, user needs and technological capabilities. The post was intended to solicit discussion, and... Read More »
Help Me Design a Topology of Search Concepts
Search is a wicked problem, with no apparent universal solution in sight. Different technologies and approaches to search exist side by side, serving a multitude of business goals and user needs. In my work with search user experience I find it important to understand the particular strengths and weaknesses of search concepts like Best... Read More »
Behavioral Economics Meets The Power of Defaults at Hunch
I like Barack Obama, but that is not why I have put his face on my blog. I have been playing around with Hunch.com the last few days, both answering and creating questions. I have discovered that Obama is my 2008 US presidential candidate, that I should live in Portland, Oregon (partly because I... Read More »
Hunch!
Hunch is a new website (in private beta) that helps you make decisions faster, and perhaps even better. Questions like “What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? What toe ring should I buy?” are broken down into a series of sub-questions, guiding you quickly through to the final conclusion. Decision-making is difficult, and decisions have to be made constantly. This is where I believe recommendation systems still have a way to go, for them to become efficient decision facilitators, and not merely option generators. Perhaps Hunch is the next step in that direction? I’m still waiting for my invite, and as soon as I get my hands on one, I’ll let you know if my hunch is right.
Hunch!
Hunch is a new website (in private beta) that helps you make decisions faster, and perhaps even better. Questions like "What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? What toe ring should I buy?" are broken down into a series of sub-questions, guiding you quickly through to the final conclusion. Decision-making is difficult, and decisions have to be made constantly. This is where I believe recommendation systems still have a way to go, for them to become efficient decision facilitators, and not merely option generators. Perhaps Hunch is the next step in that direction? I'm still waiting for my invite, and as soon as I get my hands on one, I'll let you know if my hunch is right.
Google’s Wonder Wheel Experiment
Want to participate in one of Google’s user interface experiments? Google Blogoscoped tells you how to grant yourself access to the Google Wonder Wheel. Go to google.com, paste the Javascript into the address bar, and take the wonder wheel for a spin. The wheel displays a circle with your keyword, connected to other circles with related terms. There’s also a timeline view, and options to show longer snippets and more images for each search result. You can also use filter the results on type (recent, videos, forums and reviews), as well as freshness (time and date). The related terms aren’t based on Google’s Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI), which you can access by prefixing your keyword with the tilda (~) operator. Google then expands you search with semantically (actually derived from statistics) related concepts. I wonder why they decided not to fuse the two related terms initiatives. (via http://thenoisychannel.com)
Google’s Wonder Wheel Experiment
Want to participate in one of Google's user interface experiments? Google Blogoscoped tells you how to grant yourself access to the Google Wonder Wheel. Go to google.com, paste the Javascript into the address bar, and take the wonder wheel for a spin. The wheel displays a circle with your keyword, connected to other circles with related terms. There's also a timeline view, and options to show longer snippets and more images for each search result. You can also use filter the results on type (recent, videos, forums and reviews), as well as freshness (time and date). The related terms aren't based on Google's Latent Semantic Analysis (LSI), which you can access by prefixing your keyword with the tilda (~) operator. Google then expands you search with semantically (actually derived from statistics) related concepts. I wonder why they decided not to fuse the two related terms initiatives. (via http://thenoisychannel.com)
Wikipedia – A Democratic Gold Standard for Topic Maps
Topic Maps, an ISO standard for semantic networks, relies on authorities to create and maintain Published Subject Indicators (PSIs), uniquely linking single topics to single subjects out there in the real world. TopicMaps.Org has eg. published indicators for languages and countries. But who gets to claim authority over a particular set of topics? Conflicts... Read More »
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