jaw-dropping user experiences

There’s nothing like a circus to take you back to the childlike wonder and awe of amazing acts that seem to defy reality. And, there’s no jaw-dropping experience that compares to a cirque circus. We went to Cirque du Soleil (Corteo) on Friday and I think my jaw hit the ground so many times that my chin may need a band-aid! But seriously, anyone who has been to a cirque show can tell you that it is not a show that can be adequately described with words, but must be experienced in person.

This got me thinking about “jaw-dropping user experiences.” What examples of jaw-dropping user experiences do we have with respect to software, devices, or internet applications? I.e., experiences that bring childlike wonder and joy, those that suspend disbelief, or those that transform the way we do things? I think most start-ups believe that they have found a holy grail of some form or another. For some new ideas, the “aha!” moment for the user is immediate, for others, it takes time. But, for the ultimate jaw-dropping ideas, it takes a first-hand experience. Take Apple’s iPod nano, for example. Seeing it on the website brought on a “looks cool” for me. Seeing it on tv made me think that Apple must really be trying to market these things. But, seeing it in person in the Apple Store was the “wow, what’s not to like?” moment for me. The nano was the first mp3 device to defy the expected ratio of features to size — thereby changing our view of reality and what’s possible. For me, Yahoo Instant Search was another great experience for me, while services like del.icio.us did not really start to shine until they had enough critical mass to leverage the social network effect and advantage.

How about you? What jaw-dropping user experiences have you had?

 

search results = wall texturing for search engines

One of our first home improvement projects involved removing wallpaper from an accent wall of our guest bedroom and then giving the whole room a fresh coat of paint. As we talked about painting interior walls with friends and family, we had several people ask if we were going to “texturize” the walls. Given the choice, I think we would leave well enough alone and just paint the wall flat. Unfortunately, it turns out that the rest of the room already had textured walls, so we felt obligated to blend in the remaining wall. Since our novice wallpaper removal techniques resulted in slightly imperfect drywall, this seemed like a blessing in disguise… (until we actually tried to do wall texturizing on our own — but that is another story…)

Well, after having a) inspected our existing wall texturing up close, and b) personally doing my own wall texturing, I think I have discovered the “hidden secret” behind this technique. The truth is: wall texturing is an imperfect art designed to camouflage an imperfect job. This is actually quite brilliant on the part of the inventor. Is your drywall imperfect? No problem! — just add some wall texturing! Is this your first time wall texturing? No problem! — wall texturing is supposed to look random and like a mish mash. Does your wall texturing job look terrible when you inspect it up close? No problem! It turns out most people don’t inspect walls very closely unless they are painting them. So, to your average house guest, your (imperfectly) textured walls look perfectly fine. Furthermore, some people prefer textured walls over non-textured walls, since the texture adds dimension, depth and (unconscious) interest to the walls — i.e., texture can make the walls look better!

But, how does this relate to search? Simple. Search, especially as we experience it on the web today, is an imperfect science. Search results, or rather the way in which search results are presented, act as the “wall texturing” for search engines. Different search engines use different wall texturing techniques — all to make you, the user, appreciate the way the results look, or at least how they look in general. When you inspect the results closely, however, lots of little flaws are revealed. The search engine creators, like the inventors of wall texturing before them, have discovered that they can use an imperfect mask (i.e., the way the results are presented) to camouflage an imperfect job [of their search engines]. As long as the results look good enough to most of us most of the time, we appreciate them for what they are. Here, competition is a good thing; it’s the competition that drives the changes and improvements in the current search engines.

So, search results = wall texturing for search engines, but there are lots of different search textures out there. Which do you prefer? For a concrete comparison, try searching for “cougar” on Google, Yahoo, Clusty, Ask.com, ebay, or flickr. Do the differences in the results surprise you?