The Search Engine Decision

It seems there has been a recent surge in search engines fighting for our attention. They all claim to serve information via their own unique approach. 

Google vs Bing vs Wolfram Alpha vs Hunch - You be the judge, which search engine is for you?

Mass audio instruction: A Social Experiment by Improv Everywhere

Recently, a group called Improv Everywhere performed their Sixth Annual Mp3 Experiment. This one involved over 2,000 people of all ages downloading the same mp3 and pressing play at the same time.  As seen in the video, they responded to a creepy instructional voice (think SAW) and were mindlessly led (think cult) through a series of goofy activities.

At least it looks like everyone had a blast and ended up connecting on a human level. Perhaps this is a great example of technology catalyzing human connection. My recent post about embracing the caveman within is a relevant read.

Cure Depression by Embracing the Caveman within

He doesn’t care for the term “caveman therapy.” But Stephen Ilardi, associate professor of clinical psychology at the University of Kansas, has turned to our hunter-gatherer ancestors for clues about how to best combat major depressive disorder.

Further, Ilardi fingers our modern, industrialized lifestyle as the key culprit behind the burgeoning depression epidemic, which continues to worsen despite decades of sharp increases in pharmaceutical consumption.

“A century ago, according to the best epidemiological evidence we have, the lifetime rate of depressive illness in the U.S. was about 1 percent,” said Ilardi. “The rate now stands at 23 percent. So we’ve had roughly a 20-fold increase over the course of a century. Since World War II there’s been roughly a 10-fold increase. And a recent study found the rate of depression has more than doubled in just the past decade.”

Published June 1, Ilardi’s book, “The Depression Cure” , is based on research suggesting that depression can be treated effectively by helping people reclaim healing habits from a more primitive way of life. In fact, Ilardi thinks this may be a superior approach than modern psychotherapy or antidepressant drugs, which typically work for only about half the patients who try them. The KU researcher heads a large treatment study, dubbed the Therapeutic Lifestyle Change project, which calls for patients to adopt six healing elements from the ancient past: consuming more omega-3 fatty acids; using engaging activity to combat rumination; getting regular sunlight exposure; increasing physical exercise; connecting more with others socially; and getting increased (and healthier) sleep.

“As a species, humans were never designed for the pace of modern life,” said Ilardi. “We’re designed for a different time – a time when people were physically active, when they were outside in the sun for most of the day, when they had extensive social connections and enjoyed continual face time with their friends and loved ones, when they experienced very little social isolation, when they had a much different diet, when they got considerably more sleep and when they had much less in the way of a relentless, demanding, stress-filled existence.”

Many elements of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle are robustly antidepressant, Ilardi said. In fact, the KU psychology professor mused that if the neurological benefits of exercise alone could be concentrated into a pill, it would become the best-selling, most-effective antidepressant ever marketed.

In addition to positive results from his own ongoing research study, Ilardi points to low rates of depression among contemporary peoples whose lifestyles mirror those of our ancestors. The American Amish, for example, have rates of depressive illness far lower than that of the broader American population. Likewise, anthropologist Edward Schieffelin observed that the Kaluli people of the New Guinea highlands – whose day-to-day existence of foraging and gardening is akin to that of our remote ancestors – are almost completely free of depressive illness.

For Ilardi, such findings are conclusive that depression primarily stems from modern living: social isolation, fast-food-laden diets, physical inactivity, sleep deprivation and less exposure to the outdoors.

With the explosion of social networking online, it’s obvious that today’s society is a composite of socially isolated individuals, whom through a variety of  online activities, are striving to fill a common void.  Perhaps the key to truly satisfying social connection, is for online activities to serve as catalysts for individuals to come together, rather than substitutes for the real thing.

Designing the Palm Pre: An interview with Michelle Koh

By Bradley Hebdon

It’s the question on everyone’s lips these days. Is the Palm Pre going to make an impact large enough to save both Palm and Sprint? We shall see how this plays out once the anticipated savior descends to earth on June 6, 2009 AD.  But launching alone will not a savior make. Rather, Palm’s destiny lies largely in the hands of the passionate, talented and empowered individuals who have defined and designed the Pre’s user experience.

To better understand the Pre’s design and differentiators, I caught up with user experience colleague Michelle Koh, a member of the human interface team at Palm. She played a large part in designing the user experience for Palm’s new WebOS platform and the core Person Information Management (PIM) applications that Palm is legendary for. Specifically, she designed the global device search, phone, and contact applications, as well as contributing to the overall device navigation and system UI design.

BRADLEY HEBDON: You haven’t always designed mobile experiences. Why did you make the transition from web to mobile?

MICHELLE KOH: There are probably several reasons why I made the move to mobile. Firstly, there is something magical in canonizing all the design thought and work into an actual physical product that people can touch and I wanted to get close to that process.

Then there’s the impact a mobile experience has. It’s frequent and daily, and therefore makes an impact to people in their everyday life.

Curiosity is another reason. Why is my phone like this? How come it’s so hard to use? Wouldn’t it be better if it could……

BH: I think most users have been used to a very poor mobile user experience until the iPhone came along. Perhaps your frustration drove you?

MK: I’ve always had a healthy dose of “dissatisfaction”, so yes.

BH: What else pulled you into the mobile space?

MK: I had a desire to get out of my comfort-zone and design in an industry, medium, and technology where I would have to learn from others and also contribute from my own experiences.

Also, I recognized the social and technology blips on the radar and had a wishy-washy feeling that the Smartphone was the next milestone in this information age. So I wanted to adopt it and adapt my design thinking and skills.

BH: Now that you’ve immersed yourself in designing for the mobile experience, do you have anything in mind going forward?

MK: My next area of focus might be to try and find meaningful and useful ways to breed the web and mobile experiences together … it’s vague … but vagueness is typically the starting point for further discovery and viability. I think we are seeing really good glimpses of this with the web version of Facebook and the iPhone version of Facebook.

BH: What were the biggest challenges in moving from web to mobile?

MK: My biggest challenge in making this transition was honestly a personal one filled with excitement, doubt, and uncertainty. When I started my career in web, it fortunately coincided with the birth of the “web designer” and so as this field was maturing, I was as well. I couldn’t get a degree in this so I taught myself and learned from others in the same position. I learned everything as it was being invented, ingested the innovations, and practiced them. I hope I can say this without sounding prideful and self-proclaimed, but I became pretty good at it.

BH: So you were in a comfortable place then?

MK: Yes. At that point, it was easy to stay where I was comfortable. But I was once told that your biggest challenge as a designer is when you take a leap. So I jumped! And so transitioning to mobile was a challenge in that I did not mature in this industry, relatively, there was more that I did not know, it’s very technical in nature, and I doubted myself. The challenge was more personal. Right now, it’s so exciting to be in this chaos of change but it is challenging.

BH: Speaking of exciting, the upcoming release of Palm’s Pre must represent a climax to what must have been a thrilling time for you and the design team.  And it seems the pundits are matching up the Pre against the iPhone, how do you think the Pre differs from the iPhone?

MK: I remember when i saw the first mock-up of this over a year ago. The inner industrial designer in me screamed “brilliant”! The slight curve felt comfortable in my hand and when I slid open the device, the curve line was further emphasized so that I could cradle it against my ear. And the keyboard is hidden away when I don’t need it. You don’t expect curves on devices so this was a delightful design decision that I appreciate a great deal. The curves are reinforced in the overall footprint down to the keyboard, which gives it a sense of harmony.

BH: One of the first things people will notice is the Pre’s keyboard. Do you see it as an advantage over the iPhone?

MK: Having used a virtual keyboard on the iPhone for over a year now, I think that the physical vs. virtual keyboard battle is actually a preference issue. I’ve become very good at using my screen keyboard and can type very fast. I also like using the Pre’s keyboard because I make fewer errors. Both benefits are on par but there is an advantage to a physical keyboard … screen real estate! What could be used for valuable information is taken up by the virtual keyboard on my iPhone, which in my experience is a poor one.

BH: Can you tell me about the Touchstone wireless charger?

MK: This is just so cool because what was only possible in movies, is now possible in real-life for a mass consumer product. It’s always exciting when something considered “geek” becomes “chic”. Not only does this matter in the way a device is charged, but also for human behavior and cognition. I actually don’t like to charge my iPhone because I don’t like the weird stress I feel in jamming my phone into a charger. I can’t explain it, it’s just visceral. But how fluid and stress-free it is to simply place the device on the Touchstone … this is natural movement … back to being human.

BH: The Touchstone is definitely a differentiator. I’d like to see something like this re-charge a few devices at a time.  What else do you think separates the Pre from the iPhone?

MK: I’m not an operating system expert, but in my last two jobs in the mobile industry, I’ve learned that the platform matters BIG time. I learned early that an out-dated platform was the bane of so many phones for too long and helped me understand why my cell phone experience was so poor. From a user experience standpoint, the platform is what enables single-tasking to multi-tasking … the biggest elephant probably in iPhone meetings these days. And if I’m not wrong, what makes the hybrid of RIMs Blackberry Storm plus “touch” interface so horribly wrong. A killer OS is key, and in the Pre’s case it’s WebOS.

BH: I’ve seen the term “Synergy” being mentioned quite a bit. What is this?

MK: When I started designing around integration with Facebook and web PIM data, I just wanted to solve a reoccurring problem I had, especially when it came to personal information management (PIM) data. I wanted to work with content that I had already created … and not recreate it. I didn’t want to care about where the data was as long as I could get it. I didn’t want to manage my contacts and spend needless hours configuring an application especially when everyone is doing this already with their own personal data anyways (i.e. Facebook profiles). Palm has been calling this “Synergy” and this will be key for future technology. Not only for mobile but for devices like netbooks which will have limited hardware bandwidth.

BH: Personally, I think the browser is one of the most important ingredients in a mobile experience – how does the Pre perform in this area?

MK: I’ve seen internal side-by-side comparisons of the Palm Pre browser vs. iPhone Safari browser and let me say that the new browser is simply awesome. Navigating pages is a breeze thanks to the WebOS card environment. Flash is going to be really exciting as this has been long anticipated. With so many websites built in or with components of flash, the need to browse them on my device is be even more critical.

BH: What do you mean by “WebOS card environment”?

MK: Oh, that’s a feature that enables a user to quickly flick through applications, as you would with a deck of cards.

BH: So that’s part of the multitasking capabilities?

MK: Yes, that’s right.

BH: That sounds like a great example of how a real-life metaphor was brought into the experience.  How is Palm encouraging the development of applications for the Pre?

MK: How good and fast can a designer build something with a new set of tools never used before? Now … how good and fast can a designer build something, with tools they have experience with, their friends have experience with, and the community is drenched in? As the age old saying goes, Palm didn’t “reinvent the wheel”, we just rolled the wheel in a different direction creating new pathways with familiar tools like HTML, CSS, and Javascript to leverage a web-centric technology.

BH: From what I’ve seen so far, the user interface looks fantastic; even better than the iPhone’s! What were the guiding principles that ultimately drove the architecture and aesthetic?

MK: We always wanted to make sure that we loved the product, the interface, and the experience. As a designer, you have to be invested in the product experience and to also consider it a major driving force in certain situations. The design shouldn’t be totally self-referential but there is a place for it when it’s defining an original archetype and setting a new bar. I think that is the situation we were in.

BH: Now that the release of the Pre is imminent, will you be working on any future Palm devices?

MK: It would have been nice to continue my stay with Palm because of my great colleagues and the rare break-through opportunities.  However since the company is in Silicon Valley and my home and family are in Los Angeles, it was not personally and logistically sensible in the long run.

I feel grateful to have had the support and opportunity to contribute to Palm for almost a year and a half and I hope to have contributed to the “Zen of Palm” come-back (Google this) while elevating the mobile experience for Palm users. I really do hope the users will be happy.  That really was my main goal.

BH: So what’s next then?

MK: What’s next? I guess I can answer that question with another question.  What’s next in this information and technology driven age?

Along with mobility, social networking seems like it’s here to stay.  I mentioned earlier in our conversation that I found the intersection of web, mobile, and social networking a land with more to discover.  That intersection is small right now, but the trends seem to be saying that it’ll get even bigger … and since we’re in LA, what if we throw music into the mix?

BH: You’re intersecting social networking with mobile?

MK: Actually, my next opportunity is to contribute at MySpace Music in the area of user experience. This is a relatively new joint venture with a handful of major music labels seeking to create an empowering economy for fans, artists and labels.  In this industry and company, the aspirations are big, the challenges great, and the competition fierce.  With this, MySpace Music needed someone dedicated to UX so I am the first in the group to solely make it my job to do so and contribute to the evolution for MySpace Music.  Wish me luck!

BH: This sounds like an incredible opportunity Michelle. Congrats!

MK: It’s been great chatting with you Brad. Thanks for giving me this forum to reflect and share my design work experiences with others.

BH: Absolutely, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule, and all the best with your move.

I think it’s fair to say that, there hasn’t been this kind of anticipatory buzz in the market, since the iPhone’s launch two years ago. And while the iPhone raised the user experience bar significantly, it’s devices like the Palm Pre that will continue to keep the bar elevated and the competition fierce. That kind of healthy rivalry results in a win-win for consumers and user experience professionals alike.

Finally, let us not forget that when Palm re-enters the fray as its second coming, the true saviors are the designers behind the Pre, and not merely the device itself.

You can find Michelle on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michellekoh

Google Earth reveals North Korean secrets

Started by Curtis Melvin – a PhD student at George Mason University – the “North Korea Uncovered” project set out to reveal North Korea’s secrets. While it started in April 4 2007, he has already amassed a wealth of information by leveraging a community of amateur spies. While risky, it turned out to be very easy, and the secrets are now available for all to see.

Curtis describes the project like this:

This Google Earth project offers an extensive mapping of North Korea’s economic, cultural, political, and military infrastructures. Through the topic menu, users of this program have easy access to geographical information on North Korea’s agriculture projects, aviation facilities, communications, hospitals, hotels, energy infrastructure, financial services, leisure destinations, manufacturing facilities, markets, mines, religious locations, restaurants, schools, and transportation infrastructure. In addition to locations of economic interest, this map also displays anti-aircraft locations, the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and Northern Line Limit Line (NLL), incarceration facilities, political monuments, political residencies, military bases, and nuclear facilities.

North Korean landmarks seen in Google Earth

 Truly impressive work. Get it here

This is yet another example of a coordinated and willing community empowering themselves, and achieving what would be unimaginable only a few years ago.  Perhaps the “eye in the sky” or the “big brother” could be a label worn by the community too.

Spymaster, Twitter game or Twitter spam?

For those of you who are familiar with Facebook’s social networking games like “Knights” and “Mob Wars”,  Twitter’s Spymaster is in the same mold.  It’s the typical social networking game where you recruit members to build up your clan, and simultaneously purchases weapons, buildings and revenue streams to grow stronger. And then there’s the standard mode of conflict which results in either acquiring more wealth and members if you’re victorious, or the opposite if you’re not. It’s all about leveling up and domination, and it really pays to have as many friends on your social network as possible.

And while you might not have heard of Spymaster, it was actually the number one trending topic on Twitter for a while – albeit an artificial level of “discussion”.  Essentially, game actions and events are broadcast across Twitter in the form of notifications, thus driving up the “topic” and driving exposure exponentially.  Were the developers of this game smart? Yes.  Is it spam? Many will perceive it to be just that. Fortunately, players can control their notifications and turn them off if so desired, but here’s the catch — players are rewarded with virtual money for keeping notifications turned on.

Now that’s a conflict of interest which will continue to blur the difference between game or spam. You can try it for yourself here.

Adidas F50i boots Commercial: “The Spark”, starring Messi and Zidane

This is a great example of a brand staying current. With the recent surge of graphic novels being made into motion pictures, this recent Adidas commercial manages to mimic the drama and visual impact of its counterparts.  It’s not often a commercial a) excites the consumer and b) leaves them wanting to see more.

Furthermore, the integration of Messi and Zidane into the commercial is smart. They are leveraged as personalities who contribute to the storyline and brand, rather than cliched thumb-raised cardboard cutouts, endorsing a boot.

Microsoft’s New Search Engine, “Bing” is Rolling Out

Microsoft’s new search engine called “Bing” is being rolled out on June 3.  To be specific, Microsoft is referring to it as a “decision engine” because it’s supposedly built to enable informed decisions. The video above does a great job explaining how it works. Also, check it out at bing.com

Their press release:

Microsoft’s New Search at Bing.com Helps People Make Better Decisions

Decision Engine goes beyond search to help customers deal with information overload.

REDMOND, Wash. — May 28, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today unveiled Bing, a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions. Bing is specifically designed to build on the benefits of today’s search engines but begins to move beyond this experience with a new approach to user experience and intuitive tools to help customers make better decisions, focusing initially on four key vertical areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business. The result of this new approach is an important beginning for a new and more powerful kind of search service, which Microsoft is calling a Decision Engine, designed to empower people to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions. The new service, located at http://www.Bing.com, will begin to roll out over the coming days and will be fully deployed worldwide on Wednesday, June 3.

The explosive growth of online content has continued unabated, and Bing was developed as a tool to help people more easily navigate through the information overload that has come to characterize many of today’s search experiences. Results from a custom comScore Inc. study across core search engines show that as many as 30 percent of searches are abandoned without a satisfactory result. The data also showed that approximately two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.

“Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. “When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web. Bing is an important first step forward in our long-term effort to deliver innovations in search that enable people to find information quickly and use the information they’ve found to accomplish tasks and make smart decisions.”

A New Approach to Internet Search

Based on the customer insight that 66 percent of people are using Internet search more frequently to make complex decisions,* Microsoft identified three design goals to guide the development of Bing: deliver great results; deliver a more organized experience; and simplify tasks and provide insight, leading to faster, more confident decisions. The new service, built to go beyond today’s search experience, includes deep innovation on core search areas including entity extraction and expansion, query intent recognition and document summarization technology as well as a new user experience model that dynamically adapts to the type of query to provide relevant and intuitive decision-making tools.

• Great search results. Relevant search results are still a top priority for people, yet Microsoft studies show that only one in four search queries deliver a satisfactory result. Bing helps identify relevant search results through features such as Best Match, where the best answer is surfaced and called out; Deep Links, allowing more insight into what resources a particular site has to offer; and Quick Preview, a hover-over window that expands over a search result caption to provide a better sense of the related site’s relevancy. Bing also includes one-click access to information through Instant Answers, designed to provide the sought-after information within the body of the search results page, minimizing the need for additional clicks.
• Organized search experience. More and more customers are regularly spending time with search engines, engaging in complex, multi-query and multi-session searches. Respondents also said an organized search experience would be twice as useful in helping find information and accomplishing tasks faster. Bing includes a number of features that organize search results, including Explore Pane, a dynamically relevant set of navigation and search tools on the left side of the page; Web Groups, which groups results in intuitive ways both on the Explore Pane and in the actual results; and Related Searches and Quick Tabs, which is essentially a table of contents for different categories of search results. Collectively, these and other features in Bing help people navigate their search results, cut through the clutter of search overload and get right down to making important decisions.
• Simplify tasks and provide insight. Microsoft’s research identified shopping, travel, local business and information, and health-related research as areas in which people wanted more assistance in making key decisions. The current state of Internet search isn’t optimized for these tasks, but the Bing Decision Engine is optimized for these key customer scenarios. For example, while a consumer is using Bing to shop online, the Sentiment Extraction feature scours the Internet for user opinions and expert reviews to help leverage the community of customers as well as product experts in trying to make a buying decision. In Bing Travel, the Rate Key compares the location, price and amenities of multiple hotels and provides a color-coded key of the best values, and the Price Predictor actually helps consumers decide when to buy an airline ticket in order to get the lowest prices.

The new brand portfolio will include the following changes to existing Microsoft programs:

• Microsoft’s mapping platform, Virtual Earth, will now be branded as Bing Maps for Enterprise.
• Technology from Microsoft’s April 2008 acquisition of Farecast is now a central part of Bing Travel.
• Microsoft’s popular cashback program, now dubbed Bing cashback, with more than 850 merchants and more than 17 million products available, will be fully integrated into the Bing Shopping experience.

Microsoft is committed to building better tools to help people find the shortest distance from their initial search query to the point of making an informed decision. Bing is an important first step toward this long-term vision and a strong indicator of Microsoft’s commitment to move search technology forward for customers.

Wolfram Alpha: A computational knowledge engine

Wolfram, the potential game changing computational knowledge engine, (not a search engine) recently went live.  Why isn’t Wolfram a search engine? Well that’s because it takes your query and creates content from it, by outputting graphs, maps, tables, and information that you may not have directly requested.  Wolfram relies on knowledge from official sources to do this.

To better understand how this works, here’s a simple example. If you entered “New England Patriots” as a query, you would be returned the following sets of information:
1) AFC Season Standings for current season
2) Year-by-Year breakdown of wins, stats, etc.

In this case, the data was pulled in from sources such as NFL, ESPN, CBS, Stats Inc, etc, etc.

"New England Patriots" output

Here’s another example. If you entered “New York” as your query, you would be returned the following:
1) Population totals
2) A map with co-ordinates
3) Current local time
4) Current and historical weather

"New York" output

Visit Wolfram and try it out. I’m very curious to know what your impressions are. Is this useful? Is this for the average user or rather specific kinds of users? Would you use this on a daily basis, or only in specific situations? Is this a threat to Google or Wikipedia?

Is Wolfram hot, or not?

Palm Pre arrives June 6 for $200

Sprint Nextel and Palm announced on Tuesday an official release date and pricing for the Palm Pre.

The Pre will be available nationwide on June 6 for $199.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and with a two-year contract on Sprint’s Everything Data plan or Business Essentials with Messaging and Data plan. In addition to Sprint stores, the Pre will be sold online and at Best Buy, RadioShack, and some Wal-mart stores.

Accessories for Palm’s Web OS-based smartphone will also be available on June 6, including the Touchstone Charging Kit (Touchstone dock and Touchstone back cover), which will retail for $69.99. Alternatively, you can buy the dock and back cover separately for $49.99 and $19.99, respectively. The Pre will provide access to such Sprint content as Sprint Navigation, Sprint TV, Nascar Sprint Cup Mobile Live and NFL Mobile Live.

Interestingly, the release date is a Saturday, which in some ways is a good move since it allows for weekend sales. Making the Pre available at other retailers is also a nice move. However, June 6 is two days before the start of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where we’ll most likely see a new iPhone announcement.

I have to say, this price point was a smart move by Sprint and Palm. That said, I’m curious: will you wait to hear about the new iPhone before making a purchase? What do you think about the Pre’s pricing? Please share your thoughts.