Oblique Searching Strategies

I'm surfing instead of working, so to win back some productivity, I'll describe my basic searching strategy!

When Google doesn't find what you want, it's because you are probably using an overly-general search query, or one that has been polluted by e-commerce junk information. Argh!

To get to the real opinions on the Internet, you need to search for words that people use, as opposed to the lifeless copywriting you see in a lot of "professional business communication."

• Look for reviews and opinions. For example, I've been looking for information on a particular computer peripheral, something called the DAC-100. So I do a search on DAC-100 review, DAC-100 opinion, and even DAC-100 compared. I'm using the words you're likely to see in a review, as opposed to marketing copy.

• UN-search for marketing copy. I remember looking for reviews on a particular ricecooker (the Zojirushi NS-KCC05), and the entire search result space was saturated with Amazon and Amazon.com feeder microstores: basically, the exact same information over and over again. Use this against them! Find a unique phrase in the copy and ignore it in the research results by adding a - in front of it. For example, if the ad copy says something like, "re-heats rice to the perfect serving temperature", do this search: zojirushi NS-KCC05 -"re-heats rice to the perfect serving temperature". You'll not see any results that contain that phrase. Thank God.

• Try Model Numbers or other ID. This sometimes helps to isolate a particular product. Use Amazon or Epinions to narrow down which model number you're interested in. However, as models are often quickly replaced, you might not have much luck finding the dirt on a specific generation of unit. Sometimes Shelf Keeping Units (SKUs) are helpful--those are the numbers on the barcodes you see on retail packaging, and eCommerce sites sometimes list them in their online catalogs.

• The more specific you can make your search terms, the better your search results will be. There are also nifty advanced search options at Google that can filter your results by date range, file format, and so on.

When all that fails, it's time to go to the mattresses. Try other information sources on the Web to learn more about the topic, and search on the cues that point to expert commentary.

• Search eBay. When you can't find information or photos on some object, you might actually find it on eBay, which is not indexed by Google. I spent days looking for a reference photo of a Hebrew keyboard, eventually cobbling one together out of scraps of information from programming reference articles. Just yesterday I searched eBay and a dozen photos of the keyboards were there. Sometimes the sellers write a great deal of personal history about the items in general. Don't forget to search past auctions, and it may be worth looking at other specialized auction sites (gunbroker.com, for example) that cater to specialty markets. In either case, you might find a seller who is willing to tell you want you want to know about the item.

• Search Wikipedia. Wikipedia entries don't often get ranked high in Google results, so go there first. Chances are, someone's written something about what you're looking for, and some high-quality links have been already researched for you.

• Search The Top Specialty Information Sites. For nerd stuff, that means going to Slashdot. For digital photography, that's Digital Photo Review. And so on. You'll probably start to get a sense who's on top once you've visited a dozen sites, particularly smaller ones that have lists of links to other informational sites. They are usually the same, so eventually you will see who they all point to.

• Search USENET. USENET was the primary Internet discussion system, a kind of global bulletin board system, until the World Wide Web balkanized the infosphere into millions of website-states. Prior to the mid 1990s, USENET was our primary community-driven information database covering thousands of topical interests. It still lives on at Google Groups. USENET will often deliver pieces of insight you will not have found on the Web.

• Search The Blogosphere. Technorati, for example. [UPDATE] Google has added blog searching. Try that!

:http://del.icio.us * Search Social Bookmarking Sites. I recently became aware of [del.icio.us], which is a compendium of bookmarks that users can share with each other. May be most useful when researching a topic that you're unfamiliar with, and are looking for "valuable" links. Can also be used for tracking "what's hot" on the Internet.

• Search FAQs. One byproduct of the USENET era was the creation of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) post. Groups like comp.graphics were often inundated by newcomers to the group who asked the same questions over and over again. Over time, the FAQ postings have become quite comprehensive. While not all of them are actively maintained, they represent a trove of practical information on a broad range of topics. A lot of them are archived at faqs.org. You can do a full-text search.

• Search Magazine Indexes. Sites like FindArticles.com index articles in magazines that may not always float to the top of a Google search. Worth a try.

• Search Amazon. Type in your search subject, and see what books pop up. The titles alone, the people mentioned, and the commentary left by other amazon shoppers are immensely useful when mapping out a new information space. You can then use that information to narrow down your search on Google. Searching the Wishlists for a particular book title can also help narrow down the search field.

• Find Secondary Information Sites. There is often useful commentary on the smaller personal websites. They don't rank high on Google, so use a blog indexer like Technorati and see who's linking to that major blog you like. Use Google to find sites that link to two or more other good sites you've found. Are there people out there who read both Dooce and Crossroad Dispatches, and feel strongly enough to provide a link? That might be an interesting person to read.

• Look for Color Commentary. Sometimes you really just want to get some random guy's opinion. I like to search for terms like "really sucks", "I think", "I would", "technically speaking", and other phrases that someone giving your their opinion might say. The general principle here is to mix the topic of your search with some kind of "biased phrase." Slang that's in use by a particular generation can be useful too. For example, "friends with benefits" versus "casual sex" versus "free love"...all used by different generations (20-somethings, 30-somethings, hippies...) Likewise, if you are looking for negative opinions, try words like "stupid", "dumb" and "sucks". Use your imagination, and you'll be rewarded.

• Look for Expert Cues. The relative obscurity of a word can help narrow down the results. So instead of searching for best plasma tv television, which will turn up crappy e-commerce websites, look for color balance reproduction fidelity plasma tv television...you're more likely to get an article that's written by someone who edits Audiophile magazine on the side. Or if you're looking for something more academic, use academic words or titles. "Ph.D.", "professor", "research", and "bibliography" might slant the results more in that direction.

• Search Patent Databases. When you're looking for a utilitarian or specialty item that isn't directly used by the average consumer, the trail often goes cold, or is polluted by unrelated commercial offerings. Find out who holds key patents by searching the US Patent Office Database. There are other patent registries online too, so just look around.

  The wealth of information you can gain from patent applications can put you back on track: names of inventors, manufacturers, and related patents--not to mention the description of the apparatus itself--can give you more to Google. Or look for the patent number on an actual object you're interested in (if there is one) and look it up online. That can save you buckets of time.

• Don't Neglect Your Local Research Librarian! If you are lucky enough to live near a university library, or even a decent public library, go check it out. The good libraries have people trained in navigating piles of information...librarians! The specialist ones know where everything is. You can also find out how to access the library's card catalog over the Internet, which might save you some legwork. In a pinch you might go to Barnes and Noble or Borders or a decent independent bookstore, and ask someone where the books on XYZ are.

• Look for Accessibility / Required Policy Markers. I just read someone complaining about trying to find the "real" website for a hotel; there are so many two-bit hotel portal sites that they drown out the real sources. I noticed that most of the hotels include the phrase En Espanol, whereas the portal sites tend not to worry about that kind of accessibility because it's expensive to implement for relatively little gain. Likewise, including a phrase like Section 508 (a requirement for government sites) might narrow down search results. Try slogans associated with the company, if you know them...a portal site is unlikely to completely parrot the corporate line, but you can bet that the corporate web team had that requirement tattooed on their butts before they started the project :-)

• Search Flickr. Those photo sharing websites, with their full keywording and text descriptions, provide a secondary image databank in addition to stock photo and Google Images. I've found some pictures of pretty obscure stuff much more quickly on Flickr than I have through Google. Try it!

• Search 9rules. 9rules is a blog network of several hundred sites that emphasize quality of conent. They've recently added 9rules search, which is a quick way of seeing what some thoughtful writers have said about a topic of interest to you. It also searches through a new other services like YouTube, so this is an interesting alternative search you can try. Full disclosure: This site is a member of the 9rules Network.

:http://del.icio.us

• Search Social Bookmarking Sites. Sites like [Del.icio.us] are filled with links to the web content that people find useful; they are therefore much more likely to be interesting than general search, and the collections of links may reflect a theme or approach to the topic that you hadn't considered. And even better: you may actually discover someone who has relevant interests that you can contact directly...you never know!

Of course, all these techniques can be mixed together. This will give you raw data to work with, from objective and subjective sources. Determining whats's useful and what's not is up to you. Have fun!

Top Global Brands

I don't know why this fascinates me so much, but Global Branding has been on my mind a lot. Today's diversion was this Wired article on Samsung's Transformation from cheap manufacturer of crappy TVs 10 years ago to design and technology leader, with twice the market capitalization of Sony.

Here's a list of the top global brands, as reported by Interbrand. The Brand Channel site that hosts the list has some pretty interesting articles, like how global companies successfully localize, such as the defunct Singer corporation, an American company:

By the early twentieth century the German public so widely accepted Singer sewing machines that they were purchased by the German army—to the embarrassment of Singer's German competitors. Later, during World War II, German aviators avoiding bombing Singer's European factories because the pilots thought the factories were German-owned.

Fascinating.

I think ultimately, the appeal of brands is that they mean something to people. I'm sure the study of brands is related to the study of semiotics in some way, and I bet that following brands on either the local or global scale will teach you something about human nature you didn't know.

Thinking in Pictures

Someone told me about Dr. Temple Grandin, an assistant professor at Colorado State University who is a high-functioning autistic. She recognized her strengths at an early age with the help of a mentor, and is now a designer of livestock handling systems. She's one of those bridge individuals that has provided insight into the autistic frame of mind, and by extension the mind of animals. Her latest book, Animals in Translation, describes the world from an animal's point of view. Her previous books, Thinking in Pictures and Emergence describes her experiences with autism. I've just added these to my Amazon wishlist :-)

I did, however, just listen to a fascinating Interview on NPR with Grandin and Terry Gross. Although I'm not autistic, I found a lot of relevance in her description of the autistic frame of mind and design process.

In an online article, she describes her design process, which is based on her mental thinking process:

Now, in my work, before I attempt any construction, I test-run the equipment in my imagination. I visualize my designs being used in every possible situation, with different sizes and breeds of cattle and in different weather conditions. Doing this enables me to correct mistakes prior to construction. Today, everyone is excited about the new virtual reality computer systems in which the user wears special goggles and is fully immersed in video game action. To me, these systems are like crude cartoons. My imagination works like the computer graphics programs that created the lifelike dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. When I do an equipment simulation in my imagination or work on an engineering problem, it is like seeing it on a videotape in my mind. I can view it from any angle, placing myself above or below the equipment and rotating it at the same time. I don't need a fancy graphics program that can produce three-dimensional design simulations. I can do it better and faster in my head.

It reminds me of how I run interactive simulations in my head; I don't generally need to prototype to know if something will work or will be awkward. It's a combination of running the sim and recalling the feeling of motion and convenience, though it doesn't happen as detailed structure as Grandin describes.

I'm also reminded of Cayce Pollard, the protagonist in William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition, who intuitively knows whether a marketing brand concept will work or not. It's not years of design experience that gives her that power; she's actually learned to control her fear of bad branding to harness it professionally; Grandin describes fear as a prime motivator in her early years in that NPR interview.

It's all interesting stuff, if you are the kind of person who likes diving deep and dark into the workings of human consciousness.

Creating Passionate Users

Brad forwarded me this link to Creating Passionate Users, a neat blog from the people who created the Head First series of computer books; I'd picked up one of them before. The blog itself covers a lot of issues relating to design and user experience: topics I am very interested in these days.

Specifically, Brad forwarded this post on The Difference Between Japan and US, which showed an ugly U.S. manhole cover versus a cool Japanese example:

Beauty and attention to design detail... everywhere I turned during my two week stay (Tokyo and Kyoto), I saw it. Every--and I mean every Japanese restaurant (including the fast-food sushi joints) had an architectural bent. A sense of style. An aesthetic sensibility you just don't see throughout the US!

Check it out.

Zippiness & Perceived Wit

I came across a newspaper article called Did You Catch That. The gist is that some of us are talking too fast for other people to understand. For many people, quickness of speech is associated with quick thinking. So those fast-talking New Yorkers tend to look at Midwesterners as plodding bumpkins instead of thoughtfully intelligent. Conversely, the Midwesterners don't think that highly of fast-talking either.

And internationally, it seems that slower-speaking people end up being the butt of jokes. From the article:

All over the world, speakers from some geographic regions tend to speak more slowly than those from others. And in every country that has been studied, people from the slower-speaking regions are stereotyped as stupid. This pattern was uncovered by Finnish linguists Jaakko Lehtonen and Kari Sajavaara, who had reason to be interested because Finns are thought to be slow and dull by neighboring Swedes.

Lehtonen and Sajavaara suspected that the Finns' characteristically slower rate of speech -- and greater use of silence -- might have something to do with the stereotype. So they investigated and found similar attitudes where one ethnic or regional group tends to speak more slowly than others: in Germany with East Frisians, in French attitudes toward Belgians, among the Swiss toward residents of Berne or Zurich, and among Finns themselves toward their compatriots from a region called Häme (pronounced HAH-may).

I had always wondered why the Belgians got made fun of in Europe, having first become aware of this in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Finally I know why!