Trumblog

The following is a liveblog of a presentation by Peter Morville on information architecture, search design patterns and the future of search that was given at South by Southwest on March 14, 2010.

6:05:16 PM: Information Architecture; structural design of information environments, design maps for wayfinding and understanding

6:06:45 PM: Winchester Mystery House, Winchester CA house continuously built by due to psychic prediction. Metaphor for websites

6:07:49 PM: Search is among the most disruptive innovations of our time. It influences what we buy, where we go, what we learn

6:09:08 PM: Search process is iterative and interactive. Search has become among the most important ways that we learn

6:09:28 PM: We need to optimize for learning, not search engine optimization

6:10:43 PM: Understanding users, interface (results box critical), engine, content, content creators necessary for search

6:11:20 PM: Need to incentivize and educate content creators to aid in better search

6:11:47 PM: RT @Mark_F: One of the most important interfaces on a web site is the results page

6:12:59 PM: Search: Design for immediate response, predictability, direct manipulations, use context

6:14:00 PM: Need to consider how search works with other systems of research and personalization.

6:14:29 PM: For social search it is critical to let people know in real time search that there are new results

6:15:48 PM: In mobile search and kiosks need to nudge users toward browsing for queries, but browsing doesn’t scale

6:17:17 PM: Christopher Alexander – patterns for building elements, their purposes and uses

6:17:58 PM: Search patterns – Peter Morville Flickr set of results pages

6:18:52 PM: Search Behavioral patterns: Quit, Narrow, Expand, Thrashing, Pearl Growing (expert strategy, how do we support?)

6:25:59 PM: Auto complete: propose options to users, no reason to wait for the results page to help the user

6:27:04 PM: Auto Suggest: auto complete based on past user data, again help user before results page

6:27:52 PM: Best First: most important search design pattern put best results at the top

6:28:31 PM: Faceted navigation: promotes advanced Boolean search by users in an easy way

6:29:19 PM: Federated Search: search pattern used to cover over search problems and failings

6:30:24 PM: Federated search: searching within separate content sets of the overall super set of data

6:31:27 PM: Combination of multiple search design patterns results in very useful search interfaces

6:31:40 PM: RT @miemo: (And programmers) RT @Mark_F: the only people who speak Boolean are librarians

6:32:05 PM: RT @saraburton: Key take-a-way so far: search process is about defining and refining info and guiding users in the process

6:34:00 PM: Structured Results: results from multiple types of media

6:34:43 PM: Actionable Results: bringing actionable functionality into the results page

6:36:55 PM: How do we reframe search? The internet of things, answering questions, decision making (Hunch), understanding

6:37:38 PM: How do we find the unknown, unknown?

6:38:24 PM: How we search is changing, not just keyword queries, but sketching, singing, etc.

6:39:13 PM: RT @meganmally: In search we should look for opportunities to help users understand what they’ve found.

6:43:31 PM: WineM – wine rack using RFID to identify bottles by category. So Cool

6:45:39 PM: New Soft City – Dan Hill, look beyond augmented reality & put information into real world, public display of water use

Dan Hill-Keynote: New Soft City from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

6:46:32 PM: Search is a hybrid between, design, engineering and marketing

6:46:50 PM: Search is a project and a process, a problem that is never solved

6:47:51 PM: Designing search is part of the larger user experience framework

6:49:18 PM: User Experience Treasure Map by J Callender and P Morville http://bit.ly/blLGpP

6:50:43 PM: Look at search in 3 ways 1. microscope (detail) 2. telescope (big picture) 3. kaleidoscope (creativity)

6:57:55 PM: However bad search is on an external website, it’s 10X worse on an intranet

7:00:33 PM: Brilliant presentation by @Morville Thank you.