[Sigia-l] www.live.com search - a missed opportunity?

[Alexander Johannesen]

Hi,

On 3/9/06, Stewart Dean <stew8dean at hotmail.com> wrote:
> For those who havnt seen it Microsoft have launched a Web 2.0 style search
> at www.live.com

I did my normal rounds of somewhat complex searches that I know are
challenging (mostly including italian baroque music composers; it
could be that this perticular focus is not well represented in
live.com :), and Google scores 3 while this scored over 50 (I stopped
counting at that stage). 1 is best score. So this site was not very
good for semantically challenging things, nor for specific things, but
good for very general things, in other words. But this is just
searching. Let's talk interface ;

> My view is that currently the dynamic elements on this page add nothing to
> the information compared to a site like google.

I'll go stronger out and claim that it in fact takes away from the UX;
unfamiliar elements, unfamiliar behaviour to elements you think you
know, and so forth. What does 'smooth scrolling' add? It is one of the
first things I disable with any new IE installation; it slows me down
and make the system seem sluggish. And what does it add that the main
search box a) looks like a graphic, and b) behaves like a game spirit?
I simply didn't understand it was a working input selector. Maybe I'm
not hip enough to be using this Web 2.0 stuff.

How do I do "more like this" searches? I have to understand that a
horisontal drag selector in the top-right corner adds this info to the
items. Shockingly bad.

Next, we're visual people; by removing the scrollbar I have no visual
hint to where I am in the list; it has been replaced by the cryptic
"65-71 (24,136)". Really bad.

What does "add to live.com" mean? Add a resource or website to the
search engine? I thought that, but I was wrong; it is "add this search
to your page", like MyPage. And on that page ;

Elements that contain nothing, contains nothing, not even a friendly
message that it contains nothing, so you have to explore the
nothingness of the box to find this out. Why not just slap a "none
selected" or "none added" to the box so it becomes quite clear? Some
of the boxes comes prefilled with stuff, others don't. If the content
isn't there, how do we know what it is? One box is called "gadget
gallery"; does it have pictures of my MP3 player? Confusing.

I could go on.

> My feeling is that Microsoft have missed the point.

Amen; this is "we're cool with Web 2.0 stuff" more than a good
service. I really didn't like it, and my normal usability testing
(dragging some collegues in and ask them 'do X' or 'find Y') shows
less than satisfactory results. thumbs way down.


Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
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