Comments on: Differentiation: The New Enterprise Search Barrier http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2009/10/30/differentiation-the-new-enterprise-search-barrier/ by Stephen E. Arnold Sun, 12 Feb 2012 09:55:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Avi Rappoport, Search Tools Consulting http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2009/10/30/differentiation-the-new-enterprise-search-barrier/comment-page-1/#comment-76618 Avi Rappoport, Search Tools Consulting Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:22:12 +0000 http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/?p=9156#comment-76618 Steve, People I respect, like Don Norman, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville have been using the term "user experience" for years, and it means something specific, which needed a name. "User interface" is the browser or desktop app, with menus and form fields and so on. "Functionality" is the back-end functionality: in search, that's the query, retrieval and relevance algorithms. The whole lot of it put together is the UX, (user experience). If that's not right, why bother? You can have a gorgeous design and a fantastic algorithm, but if the UX fails, the search fails. Not that I necessarily want vendors to blather about it, but I do want some of them to understand UX, to make sure their systems can be usable instead of forcing the customers to do it all individually. Avi Steve,

People I respect, like Don Norman, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville have been using the term “user experience” for years, and it means something specific, which needed a name.

“User interface” is the browser or desktop app, with menus and form fields and so on. “Functionality” is the back-end functionality: in search, that’s the query, retrieval and relevance algorithms. The whole lot of it put together is the UX, (user experience). If that’s not right, why bother? You can have a gorgeous design and a fantastic algorithm, but if the UX fails, the search fails.

Not that I necessarily want vendors to blather about it, but I do want some of them to understand UX, to make sure their systems can be usable instead of forcing the customers to do it all individually.

Avi

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