This month’s episode of UXPodcast with James Royal-Lawson and Per Axbom talks about Search – its complexity and shortcomings, its evolution, and how we can deal with that evolution.

In part one – Does search work? With the introduction of social and blended search, It’s become more complex than ever to comprehend. We take a dive into that complexity, as well as it’s problems and limitations.

In part two – The evolution of searching. With social search, humans are back in the centre of search once again. We look at “T-shaped” people (with broad knowledge and a deep speciality), specialised search, and sharing relevant content on the crest of the wave.

In part three – the good will prevail. We talk about the importance of gardeners, curators, sneezers – “T-shaped people”, microformats, and give some practical tips for understanding search and how you no longer “get away with being shit”.

(Listening time, 28 minutes)

References:

• Eli Pariser: Beware online “filter bubbles”
• Our Current Thinking on Search
• Traditional search is failing
• Stupid bloody system
• The multiplier effect – How to build a collaboration platform
• Dunbar’s number
• T-shaped people can be more than one person
• Structured data and microformats, schema.org
• Mycroft project, adding search providers to your browser.
• Getting “pure” search results