It’s time to go directly to A List Apart and execute your civic duty. The new, 2008, ALA Survey for People Who Make Web Sites is now available and they need your data.

Enough said. Help out the greater good.

Anna Patterson quit her job at Google in 2006, a place she only had the opportunity to work for approximately two years after her previous product, Recall, had been purchased by the search engine behemoth.

Now, Patterson and a number of PhDs spend their time working on Cuil (pronounced “cool”) that has a unique way of delivering search results that remind me of ad-like objects. The results bring you a logo, description and link in a grid-like delivery that looks nice but could present user experience issues down the road.

Image is everything?

Cuil places an image from the destination site in the search results to make it easier for the user to make a choice. Sometimes the image will be unrecognizable (such as a screen grab or an article headline graphic), but for the most part a person searching for a business or blog will immediately be presented with a frame of reference from the intended result. For example, executing a search for “Coke” directly from the Cuil home page will present the user with an image of a can of Coke. Nice idea.

Of course, if you decide to search for something too old or unknown to have an image, such as Mary Magdeleine, you’ll need to *gasp* read the text to make sure you’re headed to the right place.

Tabs are the new black

Tabs are the right way to handle groupings on sites or applications that offer too much information to digest in one bite. Cuil uses a tab metaphor for group like objects based on the search criteria (with the obvious “best matches” placed into the parent browser window). As you search for, let’s say, BMW, a set of tabs are presented to give you close alternatives (in this case: BMW M3, BMW X5, and BMW Parts). Ethan, please note: I care about the Oxford comma.

Columns, please

So! Here’s where I start to wonder about the presentation model and user experience. Cuil has made the decision to place the results in a text-heavy and real-estate hogging design which is easy to use but contradicts the traditional revenue model for online advertising.

In the bottom-right corner of the UI is the option to choose between 2 and 3 column layouts. How the team will decide where and when to present high-paying advertisements is up for grabs, but it looks like they have a couple of options, especially if they intend to have sponsored categories or sponsored results.

But, with $33 million in venture capital raised, they may not worry about that until version 2.x.

And, speaking of categories…

Due to the depth of information available from just the most simple search criteria, Cuil has created a drill-down that not only gives you the option to drill-down to more results, but allows you to explore a category once you’ve traveled down a level or two. In some cases, your criteria will present a multi-tiered results which allows you to click on the Explore by Category option. Once this area is presented, you can roll over a category title and allow it to present a mini description, giving you a quick snapshot of the destination to make sure that’s what you want. Not a bad way to present the information, either, using the typical “javascript + kitchen sink” to get you the right preview.

Overall, I’m pretty sure Cuil has a lot of work to do on building a successful business for itself, but it sure does look like Anna’s hit on the money again with the help of a few very talented industry-proven veterans.

There are times where we just need to take a moment and enjoy the Web for what it is. But, that’s the problem. We don’t always know how to define it. Not to ourselves, mind you, the keepers of the medium itself, but rather, to people around us who still don’t “get” what this is.

Bring me something

The Web brings us joy, sadness, pain and frustration. It brings us into a world where we can digest as much information as our brains will take and then offer us one million more destinations the next day and still not lose its ability to quickly regenerate.

Need to copy the recipe of a garlic oil from your favorite restaurant? Boom! There it is.

Need to adjust the settings on the remote you bought in 2001? Boom! There it is.

It’s a dangerous medium that requires parental supervision. It requires as much care of handling in some cases as a loaded gun.

Something point something

I don’t know about you, but I’m very tired of hearing the Web defined as a version scheme. The Web is constantly evolving and I don’t think we should assign numbers to it. Who is to say where the point of demarcation is for 2.0 or 3.0 or 723.6? It’s against the very nature of the anarchy we create to establish a cut-off to any one event other than the moment they displayed the first HTML at CERN.

MY Web exists out of many, many versions. It is always new and exciting. But it’s exciting because of content and technique, not because of a security patch or a specific mirrored logo and hash background. It’s exciting because wherever you go, there is the culmination of “someone’s” work; good or bad. It’s a way for creativity and sometimes very warped sense of self to be posted in the most immediate medium we’ve ever seen.

And, speaking of MY Web…

It is the ME era. The Web is about “self”. Even in collaboration we celebrate the brain matter of “this guy and that gal” who gallantly showed that they have the talent to justify the consultative costs. And, to be honest, that’s really very cool. The world has countries filled with amazingly talented and bright individuals who are a link away from solving your most intricate online problems. They are there for the picking; some better than others. When they’ve been taken for granted, they let people know, most of the time in a very public way.

The Web gives us good, bad, ugly and beautiful. It’s not the total solution, but it has the potential to solve many problems. I take for granted the world that is being created around me, but not half as much as the generation that will grow up with it already in place. Let’s just hope they enjoy it as much as I do.

Google has finally unleashed it’s own, not-as-sordid-as-Second-Life version of virtual reality called “Lively” and it currently only hearts PCs running Vista or XP.

We’ve been talking to a couple of beta users and have even taken a stroll around a couple of rooms and so far it’s still somewhat controlled. I keep wondering if currency and the adult content on Second Life will eventually make it throughout the new Lively experience.

Time will tell.

We UX Professionals solve multi-layered, complex and sometimes frustrating issues for both online and offline problems. And, quite honestly, it is the user INexperience that drives our battles and forces us to analyze new ways to solve the same issues.

With so many different persona, application interfaces, retail store signage and roadway maps to look at in the course of a day is it possible that a common, overarching standardization or methodology will never be found? Better yet, do we even need a way to work within a framework that handles the many facets of an experience which combines online with offline to accessibility, or is the cooperation the process?

Disciplinary action

In each interaction with a thing or living creature there is a discipline; a niche. Going further, each discipline can be broken down into special interests or subcategories. A person with impaired vision takes your solution and offers feedback, thereby offering you a chance to develop alternatives that keep the values of the original intention.

Without specialization for each UX discipline, we are back in the stone ages of interaction. It takes the combination of interdisciplinary skills to truly solve problems.

Working beyond our means

It’s quite possible that you’ve been on a project where the good and the bad weren’t challenges presented by the information design or the brand relation between on and offline environments. It is very possible that the good and bad were the people. The talent.

When we partner, truly partner, outside of our skillset we need to let go of our fear that one discipline will outweigh another. If we can trust another with our work or trust another with our experience that they’ll create a solution with the user in mind, everyone wins.