On Jul 31, 2008, at 11:38 AM, pauric wrote:
I'm genuinely interested in hearing what you like/dislike about
cuil, so lets hear what you think makes this product innovative.
Again... I *NEVER* said that Cuil was innovative. I find the product
interesting, and I'll let you know why below.
I was making a broader point that the manner in which people discuss
new products or ideas in such a strongly negative fashion is the way
in which innovative thinking gets crushed. (Innovative thinking is
often new or different approaches to ideas or problems that are well
established.) It's understandable that people who aren't designers
behave this way, but when we do it, we're only making it acceptable
that others do it to us.
Am I implying that Cuil is innovative then? I guess you can think I'm
implying that, but that's not what I said. Cuil obviously has a lot of
issues, but aspects of it are interesting and shouldn't be discounted
simply because people don't think it's search results rate compared to
Google or Yahoo.
Now, why do I find the product interesting? Here was my first
experience of using it.
I typed in a few searches just to see what came up, then I did the
usual typing in my own name because I'm vain. Here's those search
results on Cuil, Google and Yahoo.
http://www.cuil.com/search?q=andrei+herasimchuk
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=andrei+herasimchuk&btnG=Google+Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkwMXGZJI_lkBqC2l87UF?p=andrei+herasimchuk&ei=UTF-8&iscqry=&fr=sfp
For one, I like how their URL is simpler. Just noting it.
For the results, Cuil did something the others don't do by default.
This was the first time I've experienced searching on my name and
seeing categories that actually relate to me. I find that interesting
and if it evolves, it might become something that is pretty useful.
Yahoo does this to a degree as well, but they've hidden their "explore
concepts" in the drawer under the search field, and Yahoo's categories
weren't as accurate as I thought Cuil's were. Google? I don't see that
type of thing anywhere in the default interface.
Second, when I decide to exploring links in those categories, it auto
appends that category to my name. Sure, there are ways of doing this
in both other searches, but Cuil put it out in the open to make it
easy to see. Are the results that come back good? Not yet it appears,
but I'm not going to discount the *IDEA* because the engine isn't
there yet. (And that was my initial point.) Cuil's default layout and
approach makes tunneling on a search much more visible and easy to
follow compared to Google and Yahoo.
Try these:
http://www.cuil.com/search?q=interface%20design&sl=long
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=interface+design&btnG=Search
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkmArGZJIDpcAe.ZXNyoA?p=interface+design&y=Search&fr=sfp&ei=UTF-8
Again, if you expand Yahoo's Explore drawer, you get related things
like "user interface design," "web interface design"... but in Cuil,
if you choose "more" in the Categories panel, you get something like
"Interface Designers" and see Brenda Laurel, Kai Krause and Jesse
James Garret. I think that's pretty interesting. And I now have to
figure out how to get my name in that list.
Third, a minor point, but I love that they are taking the fixed header
and fixed footer approach. This is incredibly easy for anyone to do,
but they decided to do it. I love being able to navigate the results
or change my criteria without having to constantly scroll to the top
or bottom of every page. And having done a fixed footer on my blog
forever and year ago, I'm glad to see a lot of people starting to
finally take advantage of this simple CSS feature like this.
Fourth, I like the multi-column layout. I don't like the heavy black
type for the content summary as there's not enough contrast with the
search result title, but I like someone trying to break the mold and
do something like this. On my search results page, I can see 12 search
results simultaneously at my screen res. On Google and Yahoo, I can
only see 8. With more typography tweaking, I think the multi-column
layout will begin to prove more useful is seeing more data to decide
from.
There's a lot more I like, but I have to get back to work.
Does Cuil have a lot of work to do? Yes. But I'm glad to see someone
trying to break the mold of textual list-result based search that
Google and Yahoo have pretty much beaten to death.
--
Andrei Herasimchuk
Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world
e. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
c. +1 408 306 6422
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