“Cut weeks from your inventory project. Whether you have ten, one hundred or one thousand domains, MAXAMINE can conduct a complete inventory in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take.”
Question: What free or open source tools compete with Maxamine Instant Inventory?
Google Prediction #42 >>> Google Talk
Is Google 2.0 coming? For those keeping track, back in 2001 I predicted that Google would create a browser. Well, not exactly a browser, but sort of a browser. A Google client is what I called it, and I literally said that the Google client might shanghai the entire Microsoft desktop.
Combine my predictions with $2.91 and you get an expensive cup of coffee.
Thanks for the heads up, Jay.
Introduction
Search is a killer application on the web and in the enterprise. Perhaps it is the killer app. Therefore, by definition and practice, it is a success story. At the same time, however, no one has explained search. That is, no one has explained the fundamental nature of search. Where is the psychology behind search? And quite seriously I ask, What is search?
The primary driver of change in the universe of search has been the trial and error of applications and features. “Throw it against the wall and see if it sticks.” Similarly, an emphasis of search has been on the technology, such as algorithms, relevancy, link popularity, and facets. To virtually all people, with perhaps the exception of search engine companies and search engine optimizers (SEOs), these aspects of search are irrelevant and useless.
You don’t care much about the technology of search. You care about results.
But the conversation of search is deeper than the results. Searching is not “search” itself. Search is merely a means to an end. The crux of search is finding information, getting answers, and completing tasks. This is obvious, but that is exactly why it should be stated. The billion dollar question is, Why do search results matter?
Search is actually a last resort. If you knew the answers, you wouldn’t need to search. When people are forced to search they are indicating that they are feeling the pain of not having what they want. Search is the ever-dying-but-never-quite-dead canary in the vast mine of internet chaos.
Search is an indication of failure, not success. (Again, if you had the answers, you wouldn’t need to search.)
In light of these true drivers, search needs a realistic and practical examination. But, it doesn’t need an examination from the technology point of view. You can get that for $5.00 on any street corner. Instead, the examination is needed from the point of view of humanity. Real people, with real questions, facing real problems, and with real needs. In short, there is a need for psychology of search.
What does psychology tells us about search? Some of the answers you’ve been looking for are going to follow in the next several days. Buckle up.
(Throw me a book contract and I’ll really write something really jazzy. Wink, wink.)
“Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers.”
Related (sort of): Conducting International Usability
CNN — “Online shopping has grown steadily in popularity in the United States in recent years with retailers offering Internet-only deals and shipping discounts and as consumers have come to trust the Internet for sharing financial information.”
Does improved usability account for any of this acceptance and trust?
Adaptive Path (Dan Saffer) — “The main cause of this mess is that half of the personas out there are entirely made up, with no user research to back them. In most cases, no one on the design team has talked directly to users to find out who they are, so designers come up with an idea of a user type. The resulting personas are like the designer’s imaginary friends.”
I don’t like personas. In the time it takes to create these “imaginary friends” I could have worked with several real users. I know that other folks think personas are valuable, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Ergoweb — “Reviewers say tiny screens mar experiences like viewing pictures, browsing the Internet and emailing. Many regard the profusion of features as clutter, and want just the basics. Slow Web surfing, confusing icons and graphics and impenetrable instructions round out the picture of discontent.”
I’m waiting for a phone that projects a screen and projects a keyboard. Oh, wait.
Site Point — “How many swear words have you muttered watching Acrobat suddenly spontaneously launch itself moments after clicking on a seemingly innocent-looking link?”
Ars Technica — “Apple has done what was considered impossible by the HCI world — keeping one-button simplicity (which continually comes back over and over in usability tests as the most suitable mouse solution for the majority of computer users, who are often very, very confused when they are told to “right click”) while finally giving into the sinful and anal-retentive pleasures of the multi-button crowd.”
Builder.com (UK) — “It’s the process of judging the extent to which various elements of an interface comply with recognised usability principles (or ‘heuristics’). It’s a systematic process of inspection intended to identify specific usability problems which you can then address throughout the iterative design of the product. You can carry out heuristic evaluation on design specifications or even paper mock-ups with good effect — for this reason it is often employed very early on in the design cycle before a complete product exists.”
Not for advanced usability folks. Serves as a nice introduction.
Builder.com (UK) — “Two of the most popular belong to a set of techniques called Usability Inspection methods, and are known as Thinking Aloud and Cognitive Walkthrough.”
Not a bad introduction if you are not familiar with these techniques.
WebWord is back thanks to some help from Sean Murphy and a lot of help from MadMan. I’ll tell the full story later but it is very much like my stories over the years: technology blows up, WebWord suffers.
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