I’ve been thinking about the advances in search technology. Some of the capability that’s now possible with FAST is very inspiring, particularly in vertical domain search. It conjured up this food service analogy in my mind to understand the way we experience search now compared to what is possible either now or very soon…
OLD SEARCH = Fast Food Operator
You go to McDonalds. A good experience is determined by 1) your ability to precisely ask for what you want, and 2) how quickly the person serving you can assemble and serve your request.
Just like in current search. If you want a good experience, best to phrase your request in terms well understood by the site and hope they have done a good job organising things behind the scenes to serve it up fast.
NEW SEARCH = Silver Service Waiter
You’re at Vue du Monde. Your waiter already starts to suss you out and adapt the experience the moment you walk in the door. Initially this is just superficially based on her knowledge of what she thinks people like you prefer. But you chat and soon she’s adapting the service with what she’s explicitly learnt about your food preferences. Some of what she’s doing you don’t even realise, but you’re having a wonderful time. The wine’s perfectly complimenting each course. The little pile of discarded and disdained cucumber from the second course results in a cucumber-free fourth course – not that you even realised you were in for cucumber parfait. Having overheard you’re plan to walk home afterwards, she’s she offered to get you a taxi instead because rain is forecast. Your whole experience is smooth, effortless and deeply satisfying.
So it will be with new search. The system is attentive to anything it can use from your behaviour and other external clues about you to adapt the experience and make it effortless. You want to come back again and again because the more you use the search, the better it gets at adapting and anticipating your needs. It’s genuinely helpful.
Remember your first experience of using Google. Remember how it spread through word of mouth. “You’ve got to use Google! It’s a new search site. Yeah, it’s a funny name, but it’s amazing. You type something in and it just seems to know the site you’re was thinking.”
That was then. Our expectations are moving on. But interestingly we’ll talk about the winner of new search in a similar way. We’ll love it because we are wowed by its smarts and the way it almost instinctively knows what we want. We’ll love it because it makes our task and our lives that much easier.
