Bing Visual Search Interesting, but Needs More Purpose

It seems a good day to discuss new approaches to displaying information on the web. Not only is there the news of Google Fast Flip, an intriguing approach to what a news stand metaphor might be, but Microsoft has unveiled the beta of visual search for Bing. Finding a new approach to what has become old hat — search engines — will be necessary if Microsoft wants a prayer of being competition to Google. However, as important as new techniques is applications for them, and that’s where Bing’s new look has largely fallen down.

The front end looks slick. But right now there’s more usefulness in the front page of Bing, with hotlinks on the splash image, than in most of what you find in visual search.

However, the danger of visual metaphors is in the potential lack of meaning to the user. It’s the worst crossroads between cultural literacy and semiotics you can find. Signs can have different meanings depending on the experiential base of the audience, as can icons. Generally they only work if there’s a definite context, like directing people to the gender-appropriate bathroom or getting directions to the telephone.

What Microsoft seems to be doing is marrying a topic or search term with an image that is an example of the term. That seems all well and good until you realize that any image could fall into numerous positions of any taxonomy. Why is Jack Nicholson in an image from The Shining the representation of “100 heroes and villains” and not “film legends”? Or “greatest movies” or even “popular books,” as it does relate to the original Stephen King novel? Sometimes the usefulness doesn’t appear until you get a level down, scrolling through the images of heroes and villains and being able to quickly skim over to find a picture that catches your eye and the ironies that can follow, like thumbnails of Arnold Schwarzenegger as both the “hero” and “villain” Terminator.

The answer is that there is no answer that might satisfy everyone, which is why Microsoft puts English words under the image to say what it is, essentially defeating the purpose of having the image other than to jazz up the page. It wasn’t all for naught. A visual representation of the periodic table of elements made it possible to scroll through, find something that looked intriguing (like neodymium), click on it, and get related links. Or you could click on an image of a yoga pose like Astavakrasana and learn about it while admiring people holding themselves up in the air horizontally.

My guess is that Microsoft wants to appeal to casual users of Google and go for taking some market share comprising people who would prefer the visual to text. And, cynical that I can be, I find myself wondering whether a secondary interest in visual search was to provide an opportunity to let companies stand out by having themselves and their products treated as the lead icon. I know, who would believe that companies might do something like that?