$2b or not $2b

Since AltSearchEngines announced their essay contest last week, I had spent some time thinking about what it would take to raise the next 100 search engines on the market collectively into fourth place in a market dominated by Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Two percent of market translates into about $2 billion, so that would be no small feat.

Not in a position to make this a priority over Amy’s high school reunion, my internship or a few other big things piling up a crowded week, the one-week deadline in practice was considerably shorter. I opted to do something designerly: use visuals, and augment them with some text. The result was only a few paragraphs, all of which were abstract. I did get a mention for the effort, but the images didn’t make the cut:

Traditionally, search engines have been constructed from a data perspective, not a user one. The focus is on making meaning out of a mass of information, stacking items in reasonable ways for the people waiting to find them. Those people are passers-by, a stream of gawkers clamoring to get a look at the resource engineers have built. Utilitarian by nature, the user experience is one of isolation and self-service.

When person decides to search for knowledge, she is motivated to do so by specific questions in need of answers. The user does not see, nor wants to see stacks of data. She does not wish to rely on educating herself about the engineered structure. The user wants to see the answers, presented as limited but reliable choices that quickly address the motivation for her search. Even if deeper options are provided, she will scan, prune and ignore to manufacture that simplicity.

The search engine is the means to an experience, not the experience itself. Searching for an answer is embedded into everything we do, but access to a specific search engine may not be an easy matter in every situation. Understand how search flows through the lives of the user, and bring the engine to the person instead of forcing the inverse. The documents are a means to an answer, not the answer itself. Not all answers need to be definitive, but all must address the searcher’s motivating need for that information. Answers may come in the form of an indexed page, but they also may materialize by sharing how others view that page.

Make a floor but understand what they need when they dance on the ceiling.

The other bits of advice featured in AltSearchEngines yesterday boiled down to:

1. Go after the 20% of the search market with a proven willingness to try new things, focusing on simplicity and positive user experience to keep them using second-tier engines.
2. Form strategic alliances (“teams”) that strengthen the market share for a particular niche in the short-term to give them more leverage in the long-term.

For designers exiting our program for the real world, AltSearchEngines is a good source of information about the depth of projects currently fighting in the marketplace. You don’t have to build the next Google to be competitive and successful. Good ideas, implemented from a foundation of our core user-centered practices, can make it. First isn’t best; best is best.