I agree that search on many corporate and government sites is terrible (and lags far behind e-commerce). It doesn't have to stay that way, but in most cases it will require a significant investment in technology and design to make search better. That's why framing it as a strategic shift towards a search-centered experience is worthwhile. That said, of course other modes of interaction such as asking and browsing will remain important. They all need to work together. But search can no longer be treated as an afterthought or add-on.
Also, it's worth noting that there's good work being done on exploratory search... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratory_search ...which deals explicitly with cases in which users don't know what to search for. Peter Morville President, Semantic Studios http://semanticstudios.com/ http://findability.org/ -----Original Message----- From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of mschraad Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:46 AM To: David Lambert Cc: disc...@ixda.org Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Toward a search dominant wayfinding paradigm(worth it?) Peter is right on here... in theory. But in application it typically does not work. The users with the greatest needs, within government sites in particular, do not have domain expertise. So they often do not know what to search for. Google has by far, the most productive and useful search algorithms on the planet. They are currently setting the expectations way high (which is a rear and really good thing). But if you spend any time on corporate or government sites you will find they pale in comparison. The indexing is bad... there is little allocation for cross referencing terminology and misspellings. Navigation, classifications and the browsing process can be an incredibly powerful tool in bringing context to a users quest, especially when they do not really know what to look for. Recent searches, most popular searches and help within the search are helping to bridge the gap between these to ways of finding stuff... but they are rare applications in intrasite search. Mark ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
