From Plain Old Search to Research Tool
It’s not very often that Google makes changes to their search user interface, but yesterday they introduced a handful of significant, new features. As described in their official announcement:
Today we’re launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future.
I’ve never considered Google’s search pages to be particularly well designed. They are functional, but they are rather bare-bones and antiseptic, rather than aesthetic. That said, I think Google has done some really nice interaction design on these new features. They’ve added some very useful functionality that will fundamentally change the way we use search. Where once search results were generic and out of the users’ control—dependent on search optimization and “Google Foo”—we can now wield some power over the results, turning Google into more of a personal research tool, rather than just a search engine.
And, somewhat surprisingly, the UI design is quite elegant. Animated transitions utilizing fades and transparency make it perfectly clear what is happening. Temporal, in-line messages help you learn how the new features work on the fly. This is the Google that wowed us when they released Google Maps and Street View, rather than the Google that believes the ultimate design goal is a 28 word limit.
Very well done, Google! I applaud you.
