We’ve just finished the annual KANA Summits and, as usual, I’m full of new ideas and insights.

One of the more interesting aha moments came unexpectedly during Chris Perfetti’s presentation on User Interface Design (UID). Chris talked about defining a simple, clear and actionable usability plan that includes quick feedback sessions and regular reviews of how well one’s UI matches the goals of its users. As part of that presentation she showed an amusing series of poorly defined selection formats. Then she made a provocative observation: she showed research that indicated users are generally far LESS successful with search than when they are guided through a selection of clear and meaningful choices. Her point is that compared to a process that helps users quickly see and activate the information, processes, etc. they are looking for, search is a relatively random event. From the standpoint of defining a meaningful session, users are essentially wresting control from the UI and deciding for themselves what the terms, concepts and content objects are that should be brought together into a list to accomplish their tasks.

Not an earth-shaking observation, but the earth shook for ME, because of the way Chris had laid out search in the context of user paths and scent. I cannot tell you how many times folks in support organizations I visit state that they want their knowledge access environments to be “just like Google”, and the corollary opposite: “users won’t browse – too many clicks”.  Both these statements have always made me uncomfortable as they seem like oversimplification of the real goal of a support inquiry: to find the BEST knowledge QUICKLY and ACCURATELY.If one views the entire act of user inquiry, as Chris did, as a series of choices, paths and interactions that progressively evolves and deepens the context of the user’s need, then search itself really is just another form of browse: where a word or two defines the scope of the results list to be browsed. Seen that way, how is it really any better than a set of well-defined choices and interactions facilitated by the interface? In fact, from that perspective, it’s fundamentally worse!

I was reminded of an interesting observation made by an executive at a roundtable meeting of support organizations a few years ago. During a review of a set of support scenarios and the potential interactions that accompany them, the executive suddenly exclaimed,“I just figured it out – search is an indication of failure!” He went on to point out that by searching his users were in effect exiting the support interaction, if searching was only another way to try  some other path to an answer. He could see search as useful to discriminate known content, but otherwise the act of search itself indicated his users had given up using any other means provided to help guide them quickly to the best resources. His view of the purpose of search shifted in an instant from something used to START an interaction to one best used – in the right circumstances – to END an interaction.

I think there are implied or tacit principles behind the perceived value of search, that yield the key to what users really mean by “just like Google”:

I want:

• information presented quickly
• control over how I get what I want
• the interface to represent MY terminology and a way of understanding your products, services and sites
• the freedom to re-cast my experience if I don’t see what I want

All these principles are valid, but our real challenge in defining great user experiences is in how clearly and elegantly we think through how we meet these goals. Search also has some inherent weaknesses, including:

• Users’ queries are typically a poor proxy for the information they may really need – they are often just a guess and can lead to misleading or useless results.
• Results lists are not typically built to stratify or qualify the way in which information is presented. They have a propensity to show all information as essentially the same, and users must usually browse even MORE randomly among titles to further qualify what may or may not be the thing they most need.
• Noise is a constant factor in results -  search results don’t really provide a user experience, but more of a catalogue of items, many of which are often confusing or meaningless to the user. Even if the best documents are well shown, noise presents poor choices for users to spend eyeball energy and time on.

The magic of search is when ones’ query brings back JUST the right thing, and the system seems to know exactly what was needed with minimal user input. Chris pointed out that search is a great tool, when used for the right types of tasks: those where the information need is clearly scoped and defined and users know what they’re requesting at that moment.But her research also showed that if users hit the Back button on the site more than half the time that’s going to lead to an unsuccessful interaction.  And how many times do we hit the Back button in search?  A lot!

The big epiphany I got out of all this is we have to focus less on the unproductive debate about whether users will or will not click, search, browse, or whatever. We need to see all of these things as tools in our bag of capabilities and focus REALLY well on users’ needs, expectations, and understanding about how they want to navigate. If we build our experiences from the ground up, and relentlessly ask these usability questions around each step of the users’ journey, we will truly be MANAGING their experience, and become less MANAGED by pre-conceived notions based on technology assumptions. The breakthrough customer service experiences will come from this type of thinking, where the EXPERIENCE wags the technology tail, not the other way around!

(John Chmaj is Chief Knowledge Strategist, KANA)

Related posts:

1. 10 signs that your Search Engine’s become stupid!