A Different Perspective on Search…

When we think of the experiences that search engines are designed to support, criteria such as speed and efficiency instantly come to mind. However, one of our main interests is in how Web use is intertwined with daily life, and understanding the activities in which search engines play a role.  Within this larger, human-centred context, we find that the richness of Web use, and the activities in which search features, point to many other human values to design for in addition to fast, relevant search.  These include systems that support:

• Spending rather than saving time on the Web
• Enjoying the journey as much as the destination
• The pleasure of discovering something new versus finding the “right answer”
• Subtly pushing things of interest rather than requiring users to pull information from the Web

These aspects of search then suggest we can develop new kinds of search experience or tools that complement more goal-oriented search behaviour.

Five Modes of Web Use

Most tools for searching the Web are built around the idea of purposeful or task-driven Web use, where people seek out the answers to questions they have, or gather information for a particular information need. Our fieldwork suggests that while this is obviously an important aspect of Web use and of search engines, when one examines Web use in more detail and in natural contexts, there are four other modes in which people engage with the Web. In summary, we suggest there are five modes of use:

• Purposeful Use. When users wish to accomplish a task quickly and efficiently. They may fire up a laptop or turn on their mobile phone in order to do so.
• Opportunistic Use. Using the Web as a form of past time. Rather than going online to accomplish some task, users look for things to do ‘while they are there’, calling to mind curiosities and interests.
• Orienting. When users browse a routine set of sites to ‘warm up’ for the day or settle in at work, for example. This tends to involve looking through roughly the same sites in the same order at the same times during the day.
• Respite. When users look to a core set of sites, such as the news, webmail or social networks, for a short period of time (maybe only seconds), as a way of breaking from other activities.
• Lean-Back Internet. Using the Web as a conduit to stream media, such as radio, video or games.

You can read about these five modes in detail in a WWW 2012 paper.

Recent Projects

We have been working on a number of projects relating to designing search from a different perspective, often looking at how search can be used for opportunistic use, serendipity, self-expression and creativity. Some of the projects include:

Growing Slow Searches
An organic kind of search that presents results that grow over time, drawing attention to the things about which you are most passionate

Search Journey Stepping Stones
A way of picturing and encapsulating search journeys so you can get pleasure from the voyage, as well as the destination

Collectable Search Results
A way of packaging search results so that you can keep them and they can be given to others

Other Related Projects

• Crafting New Concepts of Search for the Home 
  The “Domesticating Search” project is a joint effort between the Aalto University and the Microsoft Research Cambridge. The project started on the beginning of September 2010 and will last until the end of August 2012. The project pilots a new form of research collaboration with the Aalto University and Microsoft in an attempt to merge the strong Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research of the Socio-Digital Systems unit of Microsoft and the design research competence of the School of Art and Design of Aalto University.

• SketchStorm
  This project explores how we might develop new digital tools to facilitate designers in an early ideation stage of the design process. In order to do so we created a technology probe called SketchStorm, a prototype application that supports some common ideation practices including sketching, image search and image collection.

• Project Greenwich
  Project Greenwich is a website that allows people to create timelines of any subject they want to present chronologically. Using the site they could show the lifespan of an individual, how a historical event evolved, or how a place changed, for example. With Greenwich we are interested in researching how people think about time, how they go about the process of telling a story through time, and what it means to reflect on chronological content to think about the past.

• Timecard
  Timecard is a personal timeline object. It’s like a digital photo frame, except the content is structured by time, and is all about one person. You might see a photo on it that you recognize, or you want to use to tell a story to a visitor in your home. Clicking on the photo brings up a timeline view that shows all the photos of that person chronologically. It allows you to see the structure of their life, and tell the story of them in an order that makes sense.

• Children's Book Visualisations
  Anyone with an interest in books, be they authors, readers, publishers, agents, critics, academics, etc may find such tools useful, but we have designed our visualizations with fans and academic readers in mind. These readers form theories about the books that stand alongside the author's own understanding and we hope that the abstract visualizations provided may help such an endeavour.

• Meerkat and Tuba
  Over the years, as digital technologies have become more and more embedded into our everyday lives, people are beginning to accumulate vast amounts of personal digital content through their interactions with digital capturing technologies, social networking sites, their continuous endeavors with the web and simple things, new content such as music, photos, videos, Tweets, and Facebook posts, is being generated and collected. With this, these collections often become more unwieldy. With the design of the serendipitous display prototypes, Meerkat and Tuba, it was our intention to engage people in novel ways with their digital content by further exploring the devices’ material qualities and interaction mechanisms.

• Live Performance
  Drawing on Web imagery to support live performance.

• SPIBs
  SPIBS enables people to serendipitously browse their digital photo collection by moving SPIBs with different search properties into a circular target area. The closer the SPIB is moved towards the centre, the higher the importance of the property it contains to the search result. As the SPIBs are dragged into the circular area, the instantaneous ‘search’ results are displayed in the centre of the screen.