Of course, whether it's a wretched beggar on the sidewalk or a pink elephant on the dinner table, sometimes we look away to ignore. We avoid taboo topics and inconvenient truths by focusing on small distractions. It's a tactic that's at home in the kitchen and the corner office. And it's often at work in IT, where search is an elephant we prefer to duck.
Let's face it: search is a wicked problem with no definitive formulation, considerable uncertainty, and complex interdependencies. Stakeholders have divergent goals and radically different world views. Requirements are incomplete, contradictory, and ever-changing. Search is both a project and a process. It's a problem that's never solved.
And that's not the half of it. Our organizations are woefully unprepared to tackle search. We lack the team and the technology. Unlike Google, most firms aren't structured to manage the high-tech, step-changing, cross-functional, user-centered challenge. There are too many hyphens. As a hybrid of engineering, marketing, and design, search creates too many openings for missing links. As a complex adaptive system that's sensitive to scale, search is a mystery that morphs over time. Search isn't just wicked, it's downright dangerous. Why risk your career (and your weekends) on a problem that's so intractable?
Especially when it's also invisible. That's right. Search is an elephant that hides in plain sight because executives lack the right radar. Many in management don't realize the role search plays in defining the user experience. They fixate on the home page, they fuss about look and feel, and they care about the content. They may even fume about findability, but they are easily distracted or misled because they really don't understand search.
So, it's safest to keep search small. Buy a brand, defer to defaults, don't ask questions, maintain plausible deniability, and be ready with a response. The speed is subject to security. We had to choose fast or safe. It's too hard to make it easy. We can't afford the cost. The results are relevant in theory. Our problem is the users. They use the wrong keywords. But, it's not worth much attention, because our users mostly don't search.
We underfund and understaff search, and its poverty becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In many contexts, expectations have been crushed. Users don't search now since search failed then. Sometimes they browse. Often they bail. They abandon online for phone and email. This regress to more costly channels is bad for business. It's also sad for society.
Every increase in search costs diminishes our quality of life. Poor search wastes time like a crooked street sign that sends us in the wrong direction. It erodes trust, derails learning, and confuses decisions. It makes us blame ourselves. And therein lies the problem. For most people, search is sufficiently advanced technology that it's indistinguishable from magic. We don't know what to expect or who to blame. We certainly can't see what's missing. Our response can be emotional. We suffer. We feel sadness, shame, anger, and disgust. Sometimes we soldier on, unhappy but resolute. Often we surrender. We simply fail to search. We live uninformed without seeing what we miss, for the cost of the unsearched is an unseen drag on commerce and culture, as invisible as it is incalculable.
It doesn't have to be this way. When we design with our users in mind, search can be an engine of inspiration and joy. We find what we want. We discover what we need. We stimulate our minds and recover our memories. We feel surprise, wonder, amusement, and pride. Search is a core life activity that engages both intellect and emotion. It has the power to change a life or save a business. For designers, search is a grand challenge, an elephant we should not duck. We can succeed at search. We just need courage and vision.