Designers can learn by studying solutions that have been developed for distinct platforms and channels, just as anthropologists benefit by visiting remote islands and mountain villages. Novel adaptations arise in each niche, sometimes in response to unique environmental factors and sometimes simply by chance. Often, these mutations have crossover potential.
Spotlight, the system-wide desktop search for Apple's Mac OS X operating system, doesn't get as close to the promise of personal search as Google Desktop, but it does sport some nice features. The left panel makes it easy to limit queries by date or to search specific places, including servers and shared drives. Plus, Spotlight invites users to browse all images, movies, or documents via a standard list or Cover Flow interface.
The iTunes Store shares some of Spotlight's features, but diverges with respect to results. It's a good example of what Alan Cooper calls a "sovereign posture application." Its expansive presentation of Best Bets for each format in combination with myriad scrollable panels and controls clearly anticipates a big screen and the user's full attention.
Rather than hiding sort order in a pull-down, its assumption of width and its structured data afford a sort-by-column approach that makes all options visible all the time.
Interactive television presents a different type of big-screen experience. Not only must we accommodate a variety of screen sizes, contrast ratios, and resolutions, but we must support couch potatoes of all ages and aptitudes who sit, stand, or sprawl four to six feet from the set with a remote control as their only input device.
In light of these constraints, large text, oversize controls, autocomplete, autosuggest, and a simple interface are all critical to success. Consider the claims of TiVo executives:
"What Google did for the Internet, TiVo is now doing for TV, bringing people a combination of excellent search results and innovative discovery that can't be found anywhere else…it works as a discovery engine, helping users find content they didn't even know they can get…[and it incorporates] Amazon Video on Demand and YouTube."
At present, the Web, albeit with caveats, serves as a pattern library for designers of interactive television. But, undoubtedly, iTV innovations will soon flow the other way.
At the other end of the spectrum, mobile search applications must presume small screens, fat thumbs, and partial attention. Consequently, Google Mobile and Apple's Spotlight for iPhone feature advanced autosuggest, and they limit search result metadata to format, title, and sometimes subtitles such as URL or album name.
Interestingly, both tackle overlapping subsets of personal search. Google Mobile specializes in web and location-aware local search, but also indexes contacts. In contrast, Spotlight covers all the applications, contacts, communications, and media files on the iPhone, but omits the web and web history. A comparison of various desktop and device search applications reveals major opportunities to innovate in the personal search space.
Meanwhile, kiosks are popping up all over. They're in airports, bookstores, and libraries. We use them to buy groceries and DVDs. Yet, despite their increasing ubiquity, kiosks are unfamiliar terrain for most designers. A bit like the denizens of Papua New Guinea, kiosks are isolated from the mainland and subject to different environmental constraints.
For instance, kiosks are vulnerable to vandals, so standard mice and keyboards are not smart options for input. Also, kiosks must be immediately attractive, engaging, and usable. The totally public nature of the experience dramatically multiplies the fear factor. Users are terrified of looking stupid in front of strangers (or friends), so the interface must be easy to learn and use.
Kiosks must also foster fast transactions so lines don't form and customers don't leave. For all these reasons, kiosks often omit search. This works fine for Redbox, which provides access to its relatively small and structured catalog of movies via an A–Z index and a "browse by genre" feature. But for larger and more heterogeneous collections, search can't be avoided completely. At Kroger grocery stores, for instance, "search by picture" (which is really a visual "browse by category" feature) is the main way to find items without barcodes, but there is a keyword search facility as the next to last resort. Heaven forbid we are forced to humiliate ourselves by calling an attendant for help in public!
