[Sigia-l] ROI/Value of Search Engine Design - Resources?

[Jared M. Spool]

A perplexed rich at richardwiggins.com wrote:

>You are telling me you can imagine Lexis-Nexis as a search-less, drill-down
>site?  And that you don't think Amazon needs search more than our
>hypothetical one-page gettysburgaddress.com?  You REALLY believe in
>categories and clicking.

Now you're getting it! That's exactly what I think.

Now we're looking into the future -- say 10, maybe 20 years hence. I don't 
see the search engine of today being any more effective than the Jetson's 
style robots of the '60s.

Having spent much time researching how law students interact with Lexis 
(and Westlaw), I believe that someday we'll understand how to build a 
search-less, drill-down interface to the ever-growing library of legal 
content that underlies those systems. (In fact, the good folks at Thomson, 
the parent company of West, who produces Westlaw, have started to make some 
very interesting progress in that direction at http://www.findlaw.com.)

As for Amazon, I think that, for books & cds, search is always going to be 
a good path for users. But, as Amazon grows its content, such as their 
recent foray into apparel, search will become a significantly smaller part 
of the interface, except as a jumping off point (with all the controlled 
vocabulary problems that Mike Steckel, et al, wrote in their brilliant 
article on Boxes & Arrows -- 
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/what_is_a_controlled_vocabulary.php) 
So, for most of Amazon's content, I don't see it needing Search and, in 
fact, I could see them eliminating Search successfully from its interface 
without users shedding a tear.

You're absolutely correct -- I really do see the future in terms of 
categories and clicking. The more I watch what's happening with the 
evolution of web sites, the more I believe that Search is essentially an 
experiment that has failed, and, along with voice input, Eliza-style 
conversation bots, video conferencing, and little animated characters who 
offer you unwanted help when you're trying to type a letter, designers will 
only use Search in highly-specialized, fringe applications and the 
occasional retro art piece.

That's my prediction -- you read it here first.

(I'm guessing your mind is no less boggled at this point...)

Thanks for encouraging my behavior.

Jared


Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
http://www.uie.com    jspool at uie.com

Don't miss User Interface 7 West, March 23-27, Burlingame, CA. 
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