Business of design
Desperately seeking…
We love the Internet. Of course we do. It makes us feel smart, connected and in touch. And when we want to find something, be it a tile to match the one the client wants her whole room based round, an 18inch wide fridge (don’t ask) or a red truck with six seats for under $18,000 we turn to the web.
And once upon a time we were satisfied to search and get a score of results some of which were a bit like what we were looking for. But that was then. Now we want more, and boy do we get more. Our expectations have grown. We want that very tile. We know it is out there somewhere. And the results of our searches? Boy have they grown.
The difficulty is that as we all become more expert at search, better and better at entering terms designed to find our needle in the haystack, the haystack keeps growing. And what does that mean for designers, our clients and the manufacturers of our converted goods? It means that out there, somewhere, is the producer of the very tile, table, fridge or fandango and somewhere someone wants to buy it. But the dating service just isn’t making it work.
I don’t want to be an expert in search; I want to be an expert in finding things. I want to help my clients express what they want and to find the very product they want to buy and I want a search engine which is sensitive to their preferences, styles, preoccupations and desires.
Now wouldn’t that be lovely?