Explicit conversations
by Pete Bell
Pete Bell
What are you wearing right now? No, I didn’t mean NSFW conversations.
Newbies often assume the term “conversational search,” aka HCIR, refers to explicit conversations, like expert systems, or Clippy.
As we know, the bulk of an HCIR conversation is implicit. Faceted navigation links, clusters, visualizations and the like give people all the information scent they need to interrogate data, without bogging them down in stilted HAL.
But sometimes HCIR is explicit. In-house at Endeca, we call those “query clarification dialogs.” Google’s “Did you mean….?” is the best-known example.
Whether a conversation is explicit or implicit is a design decision, not a technology decision. And many designers would claim that implicit conversations are always better than explicit ones. I’d lean that way, but I think there are still times when it’s necessary to barge into the conversational flow.
I’m putting together a collection of patterns for explicit conversations for a future talk. Please send in your examples, as well as info so I can credit you. And please pass this on beyond searchies.
