Our minds on media.

I posted my thoughts about user expectations regarding search over on The GUI designer’s coffee break. Here’s what I said:

“It’s interesting to note that several of these expectations stem from searches being based on loaded results from another server and the necessity of typing in a full query before seeing any results. “Live” searches such as the one in Apple spotlight and some being implemented via AJAX on the web change this. Here’s one example. On my blog, I’ve made the argument several times that search engines should also be capable of chatbot behavior. It should engage this behavior when an intelligible phrase would allow it to walk users through to more accurate information. Google’s “Did you mean?” functionality is a good start but lots more could be done with it. Combine that functionality with live search and I think the result would be very powerful.

Powerful is maybe even an understatement. A well-thought out chat/search bot with live results and recommendation capabilities could be insanely great. I’ve learned enough about web services that it may be time I start thinking about building this concept in Flash.