The recent launch of Cuil.com and Microsoft’s acquisition of Powerset.com has piqued some new interest semantic search engines. To deliver on their promise, these new search tools must provide a new experience for search, integrating a number of new paradigms and experiences.

In preparation for a new project, I put together a quick presentation that compares design approaches for a number of prominent semantic search engines, including Powerset.com, Sindice.com, Cuil.com, Twine.com, and hakia.com. Specific attention was paid to general presentation, input methods, display or results, and categorical results approach.

Worth a look if you’re interested in semantic search.

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Bill Gates just unveiled some of the few features of Windows 7, due out sometime in 2009-2010. One of more intriguing features is new “multi-touch” functionality that allows users to interact with the screen similar to the CNN Magic Screen or iPhone interface. The video below shows a demo of the Windows 7 functionality.

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Multi-touch certainly has a lot of promise and a clear “cool factor”, although it’s difficult to imagine how this technology will actually be useful to the majority of users. I mean, how many times can you resize a photo?

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I stumbled across this very interesting video while researching some of the new stuff Microsoft is doing in the multi-touch interfaces realm (check out Bill Gates’ keynote and the ‘Touch Wall’).

This video, which is from the team at Office Labs, provides some innovating and exciting new concepts in healthcare technologies, as well as some other tidbits like digital wallets and flexible displays. Well done!

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There’s an interesting presentation from Mule Design on how a designer’s approach and strategy for copy can make or break a digital interface.

For a lot of projects, copy and wording are considered “icing” or an element of the design process that gets fitted in later—often with little or no involvement from designers. While many user interface experts believe that digital interfaces cannot support copious amounts of copy (the concept that users scan rather than read), the trend in UI design is more copy, not less. Wikipedia and Facebook are both great examples of how text can be used as the core of the user experience.

The presentation also discusses new communication and expression trends that are evolving as aspects of Web 2.0 – the concept that “We aren’t writing, we are speaking in text.”

The presentation, Copy as Interface, is embedded below.

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There’s a nice article on the Google Blog that lists the company’s user experience design principles. The principles are broad, but do a great job summarizing how Google addresses the fundamental usability and experience inherent in their products. I love this approach!

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

These principles are defined in depth here.

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