Search and Natural User Interfaces - Part 2

re: Search and Natural User Interfaces - Part 2

ntreloar — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:02:28 GMT

While not directly related to the post topic, this video of Microsoft Second Light reinforces the point that NUIs enable a whole new class of user interactions that go way beyond the familar GUI patterns. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8ibcj_second-light-microsoft-surface-new_tech

re: Search and Natural User Interfaces - Part 2

ntreloar — Mon, 04 May 2009 04:36:55 GMT

Good points, Carl.

It's interesting to think about how established interactions of various types of GUI search applications (news search, product catalog search, directory geo search, ...) might manifest in a NUI. The interactions will, as you point out, be different, just as they are different in GUIs.

You're right that the starting point for search is the challenge when it comes to NUIs. How do you issue that first query and from where? A virtual keyboard is one approach but feels a little too much like the ubiquitous search box in GUIs. And typing on a virtual keyboard is just not the same as a physical keyboard. Even my most rabid iPhone friends acknowledge that.

In our prototype we opted to de-emphasize keyword input and to use a "seed" concept to initiate a search - in the example, a customer account name pulled from the users "profile". We then focused on search refinements and faceted search methods.

Still, true ad hoc search ought to be there. In Microsoft Surface (and many other touch interfaces), it is possible to write words with your finger and have a handwriting recognition engine kick in. You can imagine just writing a few keywords on the Surface, and then tapping them to initiate the query.

Voice input is another possible approach, but I haven't seen that work so well with just a few spoken words - at least not outside very constrained menu prompting systems.

Once initiated, NUIs offer interesting "search by example" and query refinement possibilities. One of the things we didn't predict with Microsoft Surface was, because it's multi-user, the powerful interactions that can happen *across* user query contexts. Imagine two users searching through information at the same time and then "joining" concepts across their respective results sets. You search for "vegan" and I search for "Italian" and then we intersect our results - like a Venn diagram.

Thanks for the comment.

re: Search and Natural User Interfaces - Part 2

Carl Lambrecht — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:03:49 GMT

Part of the question, in my mind, about considering natural user interfaces and search is how (or if) the information you are searching through is organized? The interface, and method of interaction, in searching for something which can be geographically represented could be quite different from searching for newspaper articles on a particular topic or looking up a phone number. As the user of a NUI, where is the starting point for your search? Should that differ depending on and be relevant to the ultimate object of your search?

I think you make a very good point about not reverting to browser methods. That would be the easy way out and seem to defeat the point of having a fresh opportunity to consider a new user experience environment.

A very interesting topic, I look forward to seeing or hearing where the research takes you.

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