Comments on: Coverflow Makes No Sense for Search http://www.thingsontop.com/coverflow-sense-search-254.html Search User Experience Tue, 07 Feb 2012 06:22:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Vegard Sandvold http://www.thingsontop.com/coverflow-sense-search-254.html/comment-page-1/#comment-33 Vegard Sandvold Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:29:04 +0000 http://www.thingsontop.com/?p=254#comment-33 @Otis Gospodnetic Good point! The stats say that 26% of the regular (returning) users generate more than 60% of the traffic. That's not bad, I guess. How would you compare it to other search engines? I find the demographics data interesting too: http://www.quantcast.com/searchme.com#demographics It says Searchme's users are (compared to the average Internet user) predominantly afro-american or hispanic males, teens or young adults, with children, low income and no college education. Not a very geeky crowd, I'd say. I would love to dig deeper into stats like these. Maybe there's hidden clues to why people like the Searchme coverflow experience. @Otis Gospodnetic
Good point!

The stats say that 26% of the regular (returning) users generate more than 60% of the traffic. That’s not bad, I guess. How would you compare it to other search engines?

I find the demographics data interesting too: http://www.quantcast.com/searchme.com#demographics

It says Searchme’s users are (compared to the average Internet user) predominantly afro-american or hispanic males, teens or young adults, with children, low income and no college education. Not a very geeky crowd, I’d say.

I would love to dig deeper into stats like these. Maybe there’s hidden clues to why people like the Searchme coverflow experience.

]]> By: Otis Gospodnetic http://www.thingsontop.com/coverflow-sense-search-254.html/comment-page-1/#comment-32 Otis Gospodnetic Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:54:29 +0000 http://www.thingsontop.com/?p=254#comment-32 Note this about Searchme: http://www.quantcast.com/searchme.com#traffic Judging from the traffic increase, people do like it. I'm a very, very occasional searchme user. Note this about Searchme: http://www.quantcast.com/searchme.com#traffic

Judging from the traffic increase, people do like it. I’m a very, very occasional searchme user.

]]> By: Andreas Ringdal http://www.thingsontop.com/coverflow-sense-search-254.html/comment-page-1/#comment-21 Andreas Ringdal Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:25:27 +0000 http://www.thingsontop.com/?p=254#comment-21 I do not think it is the sort order that causes the problem. the problem with search results is that what you are looking for is not in the visual details, but in the textual content. Coverflow shold be used as an additional tool for browsing search results, not as the main presentation. Coverflow and piclens are both useless when searching wikipedia, no matter how you chooste to order the results. andreas I do not think it is the sort order that causes the problem. the problem with search results is that what you are looking for is not in the visual details, but in the textual content.
Coverflow shold be used as an additional tool for browsing search results, not as the main presentation.

Coverflow and piclens are both useless when searching wikipedia, no matter how you chooste to order the results.

andreas

]]> By: Vegard Sandvold http://www.thingsontop.com/coverflow-sense-search-254.html/comment-page-1/#comment-20 Vegard Sandvold Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:47:59 +0000 http://www.thingsontop.com/?p=254#comment-20 @Thomas Kjelsrud I think coverflow was initially conceived for browsing collections ordered chronologically or alphabetically. That means it should work well for search results if they are sorted this way, aswell. But web search results (like Searchme) are usually sorted by relevance, and that becomes a usability problem. Both Cooloris/Piclens (http://www.cooliris.com/) and TagGalaxy (http://taggalaxy.de/) are good examples of well-functioning visual image search. It's like you say, thumbnails work well for images, but they tell you little to nothing about the text content. Do you know about other cool visual search engine (even coverflow ones :-) )? @Thomas Kjelsrud
I think coverflow was initially conceived for browsing collections ordered chronologically or alphabetically. That means it should work well for search results if they are sorted this way, aswell. But web search results (like Searchme) are usually sorted by relevance, and that becomes a usability problem.

Both Cooloris/Piclens (http://www.cooliris.com/) and TagGalaxy (http://taggalaxy.de/) are good examples of well-functioning visual image search. It’s like you say, thumbnails work well for images, but they tell you little to nothing about the text content.

Do you know about other cool visual search engine (even coverflow ones :-) )?

]]> By: Thomas Kjelsrud http://www.thingsontop.com/coverflow-sense-search-254.html/comment-page-1/#comment-19 Thomas Kjelsrud Mon, 19 Jan 2009 11:28:28 +0000 http://www.thingsontop.com/?p=254#comment-19 There's a tabloid quality to the title of this article, slightly provocative, screaming for comments! Although, I agree with your conclusions regarding general search results not being fit for cover flow (or is it the other way around). However, there is plenty of synergies between this visualization and search. In a ranked perspective the left-to-right browsing becomes confusing, but consider search results ordered in other ways (eg: chronologically). Consider site-search, where the images are more structured (following a format): employee pictures, car models, snowboard designs. -Thomas There’s a tabloid quality to the title of this article, slightly provocative, screaming for comments! Although, I agree with your conclusions regarding general search results not being fit for cover flow (or is it the other way around). However, there is plenty of synergies between this visualization and search.

In a ranked perspective the left-to-right browsing becomes confusing, but consider search results ordered in other ways (eg: chronologically).

Consider site-search, where the images are more structured (following a format): employee pictures, car models, snowboard designs.

-Thomas

]]> By: Vegard Sandvold http://www.thingsontop.com/coverflow-sense-search-254.html/comment-page-1/#comment-18 Vegard Sandvold Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:53:09 +0000 http://www.thingsontop.com/?p=254#comment-18 @Andreas Ringdal Good point about spotting page types with thumbnails. Visual cues are important. I really like the GooglePreview addon for Firefox (http://ackroyd.de/googlepreview/). It inserts page thumbnails into your regular Google search result. Very useful for the reasons you explain. I hope Google integrates it into the standard UI. @Andreas Ringdal

Good point about spotting page types with thumbnails. Visual cues are important.

I really like the GooglePreview addon for Firefox (http://ackroyd.de/googlepreview/). It inserts page thumbnails into your regular Google search result. Very useful for the reasons you explain. I hope Google integrates it into the standard UI.

]]> By: Andreas Ringdal http://www.thingsontop.com/coverflow-sense-search-254.html/comment-page-1/#comment-17 Andreas Ringdal Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:51:48 +0000 http://www.thingsontop.com/?p=254#comment-17 Search results are not just about the content of the hit, if your result list contains hits from may different types of sites, searchme has one advantage. It is possible to spot the type of page without even reading the text. I use searchme for one thin only. Finding product reviews. When searching for product reviews on Google I usually end up with 50 - 80% of the hits coming from price comparison sites with no review of the product at all, just a "review this product" link. Using searchme, it is possible to quickly skip those pages in the results and scan the summary of the pages that actually looks like a product review. The problem with Searchme is that they have put all their UI focus on the coverflow part, and very little on the surroundings. The textual result list below the coverflow view has barely enough information to distinguish the various pages. Both the text version below, and the "textual summary" overlay on the coverflow appears more like Google text ads than anything related to the search results. What really strikes me about Searchme is that the engineers are the ones doing all the interaction design. The site is stuffed with features, but is missing the really useful experience. Andreas Search results are not just about the content of the hit, if your result list contains hits from may different types of sites, searchme has one advantage. It is possible to spot the type of page without even reading the text. I use searchme for one thin only. Finding product reviews. When searching for product reviews on Google I usually end up with 50 – 80% of the hits coming from price comparison sites with no review of the product at all, just a “review this product” link.
Using searchme, it is possible to quickly skip those pages in the results and scan the summary of the pages that actually looks like a product review.
The problem with Searchme is that they have put all their UI focus on the coverflow part, and very little on the surroundings. The textual result list below the coverflow view has barely enough information to distinguish the various pages. Both the text version below, and the “textual summary” overlay on the coverflow appears more like Google text ads than anything related to the search results.

What really strikes me about Searchme is that the engineers are the ones doing all the interaction design. The site is stuffed with features, but is missing the really useful experience.

Andreas

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