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

[Christopher Fahey [askrom]]

Jared wrote:
> 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...

I am in agreement with Jared on the principle that traditional
general-purpose search engines fail to do any better than a
well-designed category-based system.

But:

In defense of Eliza-style conversation bots, I would like to point out
that the theory behind Eliza-style bots is totally in line with the
spirit of your whole argument: A system where the designer
pre-determines and predicts specific user behaviors is often superior to
one where the designer attempts to build a system that follows general
rules.

Eliza is based on pattern matching - that is, an author has to manually
tell her all 100 ways a user might say "Hello" or anything else she's
supposed to appear to understand (rather than teach her English
vocabulary and grammar rules). I'm surprised at how site-specific search
engines almost religiously avoid hard-coding input patterns, for example
the 100 ways a user might be asking "help me buy a DVD player" (for
example, "dvd player") when they are so easy to predict.

Here's an interesting and (I think) promising experimental example of a
pattern-matching Eliza-style chatbot that blends category and
search-based navigation:
   http://www.kiwilogic.com

These guys have a natural-language-parsing "virtual CEO" character on
their site (in English and German). This character is used *instead* of
a search engine. It basically serves the same function as a search
engine, but instead of trying to make an engine that can search for
absolutely anything the user might type in, they made an interface that
focuses on what users might actually want to find. The designers
understand that visitors to this site only want to (and are only likely
to) enter in certain patterns and certain requests.

Imagine that there was no top navigation at all on the site. Then try
asking the bot "Who are your clients" to see what I'm getting at.

Please don't think that I am saying that chatbots are revolutionary, or
event that a chatbot is better than any search engine. I simply think
that there are concepts being used every day in Eliza-like chatbots that
search engine designers should open their minds to. 

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: http://www.graphpaper.com
sci: http://www.askrom.com
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com