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.