User Experience
All hail the information triumvirate!
Wikipedia has come to dominate Google web search results. It often ranks #1 for searches on common topics like Internet and Evolution. Is it true that Wikipedia articles are the very best source of information for all of these topics? Or are we witnessing the effects of a popularity feedback loop, fueled by the principles of least effort, and our tendency to stick with the first and obvious answers? The web link graph is fundamentally a product of socialization, and Google is fundamentally a social search engine. A popularity bias in inherent in all social information systems, leading us all down the same well-trod path. Could it be that, counter to our expectations, the natural dynamic of the web will lead to less diversity in information sources rather than more?
Microsoft Surface Enterprise Search Demo at FASTforward’09
A Microsoft Surface Enterprise Search demo is being presented by Conchango on FASTforward’09. Richard Wand writes about their efforts to create a playful search experience, using Microsoft’s new multi-touch screen-table-surface technology. Words like engaging, social and entertaining are not often used to describe enterprise search solutions. So what is different about this demo?
Update: A... Read More »
Search Design Patterns for Ideas and Inspiration
If your work involves user experience in any way, you should be familiar with design patterns. Bringing patterns into your design will help you define and solve common problems related to user interaction and information architecture. Sharing patterns with your team help you establish a common vocabulary, in turn making it easier to convert... Read More »
The Future Of Social Search (Or Why Google Should Buy Facebook)
While we’re working on the big haul, have a look at Sidestripe. It’s a Firefox plugins that brings together Google and Facebook in something of a social search experience. Sidestripe indexes your friends on Facebook and parts of their profile. When you later search on Google, friend search results appear after the third natural result. It may be rewarding to discover friends who share one of your particular interests. Search on Facebook is not a very satisfying experience in itself. Social networking is on the other side not one of Google’s strengts. Perhaps a joint effort may breathe some life into social search?
The Future Of Social Search (Or Why Google Should Buy Facebook)
While we're working on the big haul, have a look at Sidestripe. It's a Firefox plugins that brings together Google and Facebook in something of a social search experience. Sidestripe indexes your friends on Facebook and parts of their profile. When you later search on Google, friend search results appear after the third natural result. It may be rewarding to discover friends who share one of your particular interests. Search on Facebook is not a very satisfying experience in itself. Social networking is on the other side not one of Google's strengts. Perhaps a joint effort may breathe some life into social search?
More About The User Experience Evolution
I would like to round up my last two posts on Google’s user experience innovations and experiements with search suggestions with a few comments on other quite recent search engine result page (SERP) innovation.
Pagelinks
Sitelinks are short-cuts to specific pages within a site, and they have been around for a while. In Google they look... Read More »
Google’s New Search Suggestions May Kill Your Website
It has been reported that Google is experimenting with ads, links and answers presented in the Google Suggests list, directly as you type. Not everyone will take part in these experiments, so let me show you what it may look like.
Normally, when you start typing into the search box at google.com (international site), you... Read More »
Google Is Innovating Search User Experience
The headline on digi.no this morning read “Search Does Not Get Better Anymore”. The background for the article was a report by Gartner, stating that technological development in search is falling behind, and that the need for federated search and conversation is not met by search technology providers today. A statement like that is... Read More »
Meaningful representations of reality
Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, says the American social anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his famous book The Interpretation of Cultures from 1973. Classification is ways of placing knowledge into meaningful and representative categories. What is thought of as meaningful... Read More »
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