Search Patterns - New from O'Reilly - Design for Discovery

By Dee-Ann LeBlanc (@deele) Mar 9, 2010

Book: O'Reilly Search Patterns As we all drown in today's unparalleled access to mostly disorganized information, the holy grail for many has become to perfect search. O'Reilly Media (news, site) has released a new book to help those following this path.

Search Patterns

The book Search Patterns is designed to help the reader:

Discover a search pattern language that embraces user psychology and behavior, information architecture, interaction design and emerging technology
Boost enterprise efficiency and e-commerce sales
Enable mobile users to achieve goals, complete tasks and find what they need
Drive design innovation for search interfaces and applications

Expected pattern design issues such as auto-complete, best first and faceted navigation are included, but the book aims to move past these concepts as well and get you thinking about "the future of discovery."

The Authors

Search Patterns was written by Peter Morville, one of the fathers of the field of Information Architecture, and Jeffery Callender, Vice President and Design Director of Q LTD.

Together, these authors hope to help the search and discovery industry advance faster. "Our understanding of what does and doesn't work is advancing rapidly," says Morville. "Yet we're often forced to use clumsy search interfaces that should never have escaped the 1990s. Users are invited to speak Boolean and then wait patiently for irrelevant results."

Morville states that this problem exists because the expertise required to build truly great search crosses multiple disciplines, and the best design patterns are only the best for their particular context. "Our book," he says, "aims to bridge these gaps and help design teams to make search better through incremental improvement and radical innovation."