I made this sound like way too much of a blanket statement. I agree with you. Allow me to refine what im saying a little later... On Thursday, September 20, 2012, Ross Singer wrote: > On Thursday, September 20, 2012 at 4:13 PM, Nate Hill wrote: > > I keep on thinking about how infrequently I use search to surface the > media > > that I want. > > > > > > If this includes Google, I would say you are in the solid minority with > this approach to discovery. > > > > I mean, if I was doing serious research yeah I'd search and drill way > past > > 2.5 pages of results, I'd look at facets, I'd go bananas getting to the > > stuff I need to get to. > > > > > > I guess I'm skeptical about this pages and pages of results for stuff that > people are "researching". Going back to Google (where searches frequently > result in thousands of pages of results), I'm really only overwhelmed with > the signal to noise ratio when I'm trying to search for a very specific > problem that has very common terms. Like "Airplay icon not appearing". > > > > But increasingly I deal with interfaces that treat search as a secondary > > feature, with predictive or popular results being visually pushed to the > > 'home page'. > > > > Think about your Apple TV, for example. > This is actually a feature I never use on my Apple TV. Analogous would be > Amazon's homepage (I can't say I've ever serendipitously bought something > 'recommended' for me on the homepage, although I have bought recommended > things after search) or Netflix. I do sometimes use Netflix's suggestions > to help jog my memory of stuff to search for, however. > > I think, at the end of the day, discovery is hard and is VERY specific to > the task, collection and individual (all three of which are variables) and > shouldn't be limited to a particular approach. > > -Ross. > -- Nate Hill [log in to unmask] http://4thfloor.chattlibrary.org/ http://www.natehill.net