Innovating the User Experience on the Web

In the SpoolCast from UIE (User Interface Engineering) on October 7th, 2010, Jared Spool interviews Luke Wroblewski. In this SpoolCast, Jared and Luke discuss Google’s new instant search feature. While Luke was working with Yahoo, he had a chance to work with the same concept called “Live Search”. For Yahoo, this ultimately never made it to market. 

The Google Instant has brings up the question if forms in general will begin to change due to these types of concepts. If you stop and think about it though, a lot of forms on the web offer this instant gratification. Sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn both offer a way for you to search that provides instant results. 

Well that’s all great but what’s the catch? 

Not everybody who implements these instant searches has the ability to take out the distracting results. For example, when you type something into the Google Instant, after the first letter is entered search results are returned, however, Google has no way of knowing what my entire search string is going to be. Google appears to use my recent and common searches and puts those at the top of the list. As Luke and Jared discuss though, not every company will have the resources to implement something quite this well. 

Inline Processes 

Another topic that Jared and Luke discuss is an in line approach to input. I know your probably thinking, input is already inline in a form, I don’t have to go somewhere else to fill out the form. But stop and think about that. Many times you actually DO have to go somewhere else to fill out a form. Luke brings up the example of Quora for a site that makes good use of inline input. On this site much of the interaction actually occurs through quick popup windows instead of taking you to a whole new page. Luke also discusses the Comcast site where he encountered a sign up process that was done entirely in a popup window. Inline input is good, but sometimes it just isn’t appropriate. In the case of Comcast, Luke felt it was inappropriate for the sign up process to be in line, rather than in its own page. 

This has just been a very brief recap and explanation of the topics discussed by Jared and Luke. Beyonf what I have discussed here, Jared and Luke go on to discuss topics such as Apple’s Ping network and reusing information you have already loaded onto another site such as Facebook.