TiVo has released a nice search feature called "Swivel Search." This style of search allows the user to look at a TV show and directly search for other programs based on attributes of that show. For example, if I am looking at the page for the TV show "Heroes," I could see that Malcolm McDowell is one of the actors. From there, I could search for other programs in which McDowell stars.

This type of interaction is different and interesting because typical search interfaces allow the user to search for an object, in TiVo's case the object is a show, without consideration for how objects in the system share attributes. With the previous TiVo UI, the user could search for "Heroes" and see that McDowell acted in it, but could not directly search on the actor. A separate search was required to see the programs containing McDowell. In a way, the swivel search allows the user to search based on the interrelatedness of objects.

The swivel search style interaction would be very useful for the iPod. Songs, like TV shows, have a strong degree of interrelatedness, however the iPod interface does little to expose these relationships. For example, I have many songs and I like to play them randomly. Random play helps me rediscover songs I have not heard in a long time. Unfortunately, when I hear an old song and think of other songs from the same artist, I have to navigate out of the song list and into the artist list. This interaction is so clunky, I rarely do it. If there was a swivel search on the iPod, it would be easy to switch from a randomly played song to all of the songs by the same artist or all of the songs from the same album.

[via Gizmodo]

Labels: search, ue design