New Generation Search- My experience

I google every day like any other normal human being and truly believe that it has been the next best thing after internet which has helped reduce information asymmtery in the world. You wanna buy a phone or a camera or know about renewable  energy, google will pull up relevant pages... But the intent of this blog is not promte Google but to look at what is missing in the current search?

Why is this important? If we look at the trend/growth of a search engine, there emerges a strong pattern with the changing requirements of users. The first generation of search were more focussed on key words based results... While the users were happy with these results, prolonged exposure was pushing for a change.... In comes google with a search which based on fabuluous algorithm which includes one key attribute of references, aka, refernce notes in reserach papers. What google achieved was no ordinary effort....Their algorithms were so strong, that search results became more relevant... Both the hardware and the algorithm created a huge entry barrier that Google became a behmoth with small businesses mushrooming around it. This includes SEO specialits, PPC specialits.

Google made it even more interesting by having a sponsored link which came up with relevant pages closer to the search key word of the user.. Excesive exposure to search is pushing the user for even more relavent search... The new search should achieve what Google is not able to do it in its  current avatar. Let me substantiate this with an example.

If you are searching for a footbal club and its merchandise, google will come up with an answer in 0.12 seconds ( not sure if this matters to anybody). But what it will fail to address is the intent of the user.. Lets make the search for any day - day activities for which you need an answer. For example, you buy a DVD in the US and trying to play it in the DVD player purchased in India..The DVD player does not read the disc. You want to solve this issue desperatly. Turns towards Google.. The commoly used key words will be

• DVD disc US DVD player India
• US disc compatible with player in India
• Not able to play DVD purchased in the US

Fo all these keywords, the result returned will be meaning less as nobody creates a page matching you intent and keywords. This is an ardous task as every human being thinks differently.

Your search will be become meaningful only after you get the keyword called 'region code'.This will be achieved only after 15-20 attempts. Most people give up by then...

So what does it mean? The current search helps search for keywords and not for the users intent... Hypothetically, twitter helps achieve that because, what is in the mind is captured on Twitter. It is better than FB as the relationsip is asymmetric. Use search.twitter.com to find out what is in the mind of the human race? Sounds very ambitious.

So what should the Gen 2.0 search engines do to make them more relevant to users?

While,we have many startups which has started designing the Search 3.0. Please read http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/search_20_vs_tr.php

But  I have a few suggestions to the enhance the exisiting search functionlity:

• Build an intent list:With every search result, ask the user to rate the quality of the search. If the result is not satisfactory, ask the users for exact explanation of requirement 
• Suggested terms: Based on the intent list,pls suggest alternate list to the users and ask them to rate it.
• Build a community/social network based search

Let me explore these ideas and build a PoC for the new generation search.. I am in search of it

Some random Thoughts

• Can Facebook look at User Generated ads? 
• Was Maslov's hirerarchy inspired from Taitreya Upanishad? Brighu's explanation of happiness
• Modern inventions are inspiration from epics... Swipe card, iris scanner, air missles
• Why do I belive that Second Life will become popular?
• The marketing concept for the age can be understood if you watch movies of that age...
• Concept of anchoring is very popular during appraisals
• Game theory is interesting....
• Why does one upload on social networks.... Possible to tell the world that they are happy thereafter....
• Did Biz Stone believe that Twitter will give FB a run for its money when he launched? Is there a prescription for success?
• 
  

Spritual Sojourn

The last 6 months in New Jersey has been really hectic and mechanical. Its been work, work and only work. I really felt that I missed the spiritual sojourn which me and my wife used to enjoy when we were in Chennai.

Quite a few questions come to my mind and thankful I am having a long weekend to sit back and think about life, immediate tomorrow and anandham (eternal bliss). Why are these questions arising in my mind? I realized that am get sucked into this materialistic life and one reaches a point of saturation. The Atman is truly deprived of its share of time.Leave alone state of consciousness.But for me to reach the state of consciousness, I need to redefine my paradigm.

This word'Paradigm'is very special in my dictionary as I have a realized that many a times when I am faced with a challenging situation redefining the paradigm has helped look at the issue in a pragmatic manner.To further elaborate on this word,[aradigm', I wish to share an anecdote from Steven Covey's book Seven Habits of Highly effective people. The story goes like this:

" A father and 2 children head to the New York Sub station and were waiting for the train. The kids were really naughty and their decibel levels were very high. The other passengers and onlookers were really upset with the kids behavior that they went to the father and questioned as to why the father is not controlling the kids? One of the onlooker asked the father about the kids mom and why was she not around to control the kids? The father with a heavy heart replied saying that they just finished the mother's funereal and were getting back home. Immediately the whole paradigm changed. Everybody looked at the kids with sympathy." The situation was the same but when the paradigm changes our reaction changes.

Coming back to where I left.... Paradigm... I have decided to redefine my paradigm. If the goal is to seek the Uultimate then my current paradigm does not help me in achieving it. It is too busy mending my ways to achieve incremental progress in my materialistic life.

Just when I was thinking on these lines, I had a chance to listen to one of the spiritual leader about bramha anandham. Looks like the solution to the puzzle is falling in place and am starting my spirtual sojourn. Am beginning to believe that once the paradigm is set then things that you encounter will be in line with your paradigm... For the last 2 days I have managed to read and practice few things which will fuel my quest for consciousness This includes:

Vedas
Upanishads: Knowledge of Realty
Yoga
Paranayama
Dvaitha
Narayaneeyam: Sung in praise of Guruvayoorappan
Thiruppavai: Andals hymns on Lord Vishnu
Chakras: Bioenergy centers within the body
Kundalini: Coiled serpent

I am encountring works of authors whom I have never heard off:

susan Shumsky:How to hear voice of God
Leo Buscaglia: Bus 9 to Paradise

Call it fate , destiny or as I would like to call it as divine intervention. The paradigm is right and my only prayer to god is bless me and fuel my thoughts so that the spitual sojourn turns into an odyssey.

Leverage the Social Media-- the Gillete way

A unique initiative taken up Gilette and Digitas to infulence behavior change in men which will eventually result in more sales. The movement was called as National Organization of Social Crusaders Reuplsed by Unsahaven Faces ( NOSCRF)with the motto called " Lets end the trend of prickly, scratchy, stubble faces" This is a classic example of using the new Age social media to create a need for the category or to infulence behavior change. Since Gillette is the market leader, the out come of this surrogate intiative resulted in good sales numbers for Gilette although the numbers could be linked to this intiative alone.

The good thing about this initiate is that neither Gilette or Digitas branded this infocommercial or promote the site noscruf.com. The video was posted in youtube and in 6 weeks had a million visits to the site.

This leaves me with the thought that consumers will not go to marketers site to look for products and be infulenced for a behavior change.Probably, the approach would be to create entertaining and unbranded commercials which will infulence and engage the users.

Intranets and User Experience

I was reading few articles on "intranets and its role in employee satisfaction and productity" this artcile from the NNgroup caught my attention.This article talks about a the role of UX in intranets. There are 2 points which presents a compelling case to do a deep dive into this space..

1. Integrating Day to Day work task with the intranets
2. Leveraging the Social Networking Platform.

A must read.......


Some of the key areas for which best practices are :

Encouraging employees to self-publish content
Training intranet publishers
Keeping the intranet up-to-date
Supporting factory-floor employees
Supporting branch-office and in-store users
Onboarding of new employees
Consistent navigation
Intranet favorites / Quick Access lists
Task-based information architecture (IA)
Multilingual intranets; supporting international employees
Mobile intranet access
Multimedia and video on intranets
Collaboration tools and discussion boards
E-learning features on intranets
Internal weblogs
Intranet search
Development process for intranet redesigns
Staffing of intranet teams; where they report in the organization
Updating and maintaining standards and guidelines for intranet design
Intranet branding
Advertising and promoting intranet features
Polls
Staff directory and employee profile pages
According to the usability consultancy's findings, too few intranets perform careful studies of productivity improvements, and thus rarely have hard ROI numbers

Branding took a major upswing this year. Whereas in previous years, 59% of intranets were branded, and 41% were simply called 'the intranet', now 80% of the winners had branded their intranet.

"There's no need to overdo the branding: intranets are for internal use, and you're not competing against fifty other intranets," Jakob commented.

Among the notable trends from past competitions are a consistent look and feel across the intranet, special training activities for content contributors, and the use of task-based information architectures.

Video and mobile access on the rise

"Poorly used intranet videos can substantially reduce productivity," Jakob warned. "(...) It's important, for example, to correctly set users' expectations so that they only click through to videos they actually want to see."

"(...) Mobile devices are no longer just phones; they're also intranet extensions - at least when the intranet has features designed for smaller screens. (...) O2 has a special mobile edition of its intranet that's optimized for the BlackBerry and strips the homepage down to a few of its most useful links. (...) Vodafone's mobile intranet scales back content services. (...)"

The Nielsen Norman Group also spotted a contra-trend: "(...) the first good use of overlay graphics (where an image appears on top of the content). On the Web, this is one of the most annoying and repellant advertising techniques. Nonetheless, Allianz Australia effectively uses overlays to highlight and explain useful new intranet features. (...)"

Usability Testing. Oh, The Things You Can Learn.

This is an excellent article on Usability testing.The most impressive aspect of this article is that author talks usability testing as a continuous process and the purpose is look for consumer insights and not any kind of confirmation of our design thinking.This is truely a marketing speak.

Read the article.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

This is one of the best speehes that I have heard. Experiences from a organization called Life.

The Science and Art of User Experience at Google

I had a change to view this video.This is presentation made by Jen FitzPatrik who currently manages UX at google.She talks about how Experience analysis and log analysis is at the forefront with every google's initiative. Interesting one!!!

Best practices - Is it the best practice?

Best Practices - Is this the best practice?

This is a rhetorical question in my mind.

I am a consultant and whenever we get to do some work for the client or even when we pitch for new business, we end up doing competition landscaping and highlight either their pit falls or come up with best practices.

I don't think it is the right approach. Especially if you are in the business of providing the solutions for customer experience.Let me try and back this statement using some logics which I think will be deemed fit. Ofcourse these logics are not as a result of any best practices exercise.

The justification are as follows:

• The inferences and recommendations as best practices pre-supposes the fact the customers have accepted that idea/initiative in a over whelming manner.God knows what they think.
• The subset of the earlier point is also the fact that the best practice is the interpretation of the expert and not the customer. Ultimately, it is pretty obvious that your opinion is not the same as that of the universe. So what if you are an expert? It still doesnt make sense
• I come from the school of thought that only original ideas sell. The "me too's" do not survive. Forget my belief. Lets take it objectively:best practice always leads to incremental progress. It is never radical coz you are just packaging what somebody has tried. Customers do know about it. I know some people will be ready to pounce on me to say that few companies have been successful ( I do not want to take names). But as you rightly said, its few and will only be few. They probably got their chemistry right in the other aspects of business.
• The key aspect about customer experience is innovation. Innovation clearly would mean that it its your idea and not a copy of somebody's idea.Customer would remember for your originality and not when you get somebody's idea and make a statement " I have that as well with me".
• Forgot all the other aspects.... Best practices approach is a clear shot cut and an excuse for not meeting your customers and trying to understand their experience. Best practices is the dampner for the concept called "out of box" thinking. It would probably mean out of business. No short cust please. Please make a sincere effort to understand your customer.

Google's and Ipods were born coz somebody soiled their hands to find out what customers want? What kind of experience is desirable? No best practices would lead to break through innovation.

So my suggestion is drop the practice of best practice. Get to know your customers better instead of learning from your competitors. The devil is in the details. May be ethnography will help. That'ss my next topic and I had to make a mention of it.. Fits in well I guess.

Mobli(e)zation

The main reason why I wanted to write is based on a moment of truth. I am in Jersey on a short term visit and I spend about 4 hours on a daily basis to travel from edison till jersey city. I am not a typical American. People get on to the train with a newspaper or iPod or with something to eat. So everybody is busy doing something.With the rest, stil worse, a good sleep early in the morning. Sounds a perfect oxymoron.

I fit into the category of wondering what to do or wondering what people are doing. The first few days its truly amazing to see things they way it happens. Obviously, coz this is my first visit to US of A.After that its BAU ( Business As Usual).

Now as I was figuring out what to do, I realize what can I do with my mobile.Can an access internet with my mobile? For tech buzz my statement sounds as though am from stone age. Hey buddies, I agree. I can hear ( rather am assuming) you guys telling me that technology has advanced and am really stupid about taking up a topic like this.No people do m-commerce, transactions etc (couple of jargons). But hold on for a moment. This thought made me " Google" for some research artiicle on internet content on mobile. I felt happy that am not left out coz only 15% of the wireless subscribers end up using mobile phones for internet access. Great.

That brings me to the next question.Is there a latent potential or is this also going to pass as a fad? No reserach but gut says that its going stay and stay for long. The only possible rational explanation that I could think of right now... Its fast paced life and it will continue to be so. .. So multi tasking is the way to go...

So coming to the point.. Actually I was trying to build a business case through my experience. So this trend is there to stay what are the challenges faced by the front runners like Yahoo, Google who are offering mobile content...hoping to create an experience that puts the devices on a level playing field with the personal computer

• Small screens. How do we provide content to ensure excellent customer experience
• Band width: Obviously mobile operates on diffrent bandwidths so downloads will be at differnt speeds. Just to make a mention ...there are 2 terms that I want to make a mention, perceived download time and actual download time. I will try and write about this in my next blog.
• Key pad: Obviously the input device..
• Above all consumer expectations on the content from the devices are very different.This the most imporatnt variable. If not handled correctly could turn out be a dynamite. I am a marketing guy hence customer needs comes first. (Actually, all of us are thought to say nice statements like these. I am no expection.)

Right now the 15% of the users seem to flock to sites such as email, search, information and ofcourse the latest from the Yahoo and Google... the maps.

Let me try and take each aspect and try to drill down and even further to find out why the rest of the 85% is still not embracing the this technology marvel.

Incase you have any inputs...pls share it with me.