MichaelBea.ch

Kaleid: Search Platform


Kaleid is a decentralized people-powered search engine designed to give narrative power to individuals and communities.

The Kaleid search engine application is designed to discover and navigate information contextually through multiple lenses. The platform will utilize a flexible multi-node architecture which allows users to create kaleidoscopes or “search engine lenses” of content creating dynamic connections that go well beyond one layer of connectivity. It will bestow agency, focus and scope control to the user through a visual experience on any web-accessible device.

Users can create new "fragments" which are individual pieces of content and new "kaleids" which act like a grouping of content. Users can also nest their own or other's kaleids within a kaleid. The nesting of content creates a rhizomatic effect which is utilized in the search result algorithms. Users can navigate content generated and organized by other users based on search criteria related to scope and range of persective. The idea is to show results that are not only what you searched for (the least common denominator) but content that is just outside of your searching scope based on the way others relate to content.

My Role

The concept and idea of Kaleid Project was started with Chelsea Davies, a fellow student in the Comparative History of Ideas Department at the University of Washington. I led the brainstorming and wireframing sessions which were collaborations. I was the sole researcher, annotator, designer, and developer of the project. * Chelsea Davies worked on the moodboard, brainstorming, and conceptualization.

 

 

Design Process

Design process: conceptualization, moodboard, requirements, brainstorming sketches, wireframe sketches, digital wireframes, interactive prototype, annotated wireframe, user testing, research analysis

 

 

Conceptualization

Moodboard


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Concept Slides

 

 

Requirements

The goal of Kaleid is to address the issue of centralized knowledge and narrative while creating a space for individual voices and perspectives. We want to create a social/network where an artifact can be shared to the web of artifacts with unique relativity according to the individual's history of knowledge.

Here are the initial requirements for the Kaleid platform design:

 

Kaleid Early Concept/Narrative:

Here is a kaleidoscope. It is basically a mini search engine made up of items curated by us, the user. You can see we can add links to articles, links to full websites, many other types of content, and even other users kaleidoscopes.

So another user can visit our kaleidoscope and do a search... they will get different results than that of Google. It will be results curated by us, the creator of the kaleidoscope.

Here you can see that when we link to another kaleidoscope it will include its curated media in our kaleidoscope. So when a search is done in our kaleidoscope, the search results will include information from the connected kaleidoscopes as well.

You can see there can be a lot of dynamic connections that go well beyond one layer of connectivity. This is creating the rhizome.

 

 

Brainstorming Sketches

We had discussions about how the platform could work at various given points of interaction. I drew some brainstorming sketches during the discussions to help talk through the ideas with a visual aid. Below are a handful of ideas that were sketched.

 

 

 

Wireframe Sketches

Once the brainstorming was completed and ideas were evaluated, I turned the best ideas into a set of wireframe sketches. Below are the wireframe sketches I created.

 

 

Digital Wireframe

Using the wireframe sketches, I created digital wireframes. See below.

 

 

Interactive Prototype

In order to test out the wireframes, I created an interactive wireframe prototype. The prototype was created with a free account using the prototype tool JustInMind, but eventually recreated a working prototype from scratch using some front-end development.


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Wireframe with Annotation

I added annotations next to each screen to add concision and clarity to each component in the wireframe. The annotations include rationale for the design decisions. They are to help situate a client, developer, or other team member when necessary.

Click to view Annotations PDF in New Tab

Below is the Annotated Wireframe.

 

 

User Testing

After the interactive prototype was created, I wanted to know how users would interact with it. Was the application self-explanatory? Did it seem like something the user would use? We conducted usability testing by instructing 6 users to interact with the application. Some tests were conducted in the Husky Union Building (HUB). We asked users to comment on any thoughts they had or challenges they came up while trying to use the prototype, and recorded these, and made changes based on user feedback before testing the prototype on the next participant.

Introduction Kaleid is a decentralized people-powered search engine being developed to give narrative power to individuals and communities. The Kaleid search engine application will be a user-centered interface designed to discover and navigate information contextually through multiple lenses. The platform will utilize a flexible multi-node architecture which allows users to create multiple kaleidoscopes or “search engine lenses” while creating dynamic connections that go well beyond one layer of connectivity. It will bestow agency, focus and scope control to the user through a visual experience on any web-accessible device.

Goals of Research

Through user research, we observe interactions between the users and the platform in aims to discover new insights on the efficacy of the design and identify areas the platform design that can be improved upon to increase usability, flow, and function.

Approach

I conducted a set of semistructured interview/observations with random students in Alan Library. I observed each student conduct a series of tasks that was prompted using the platform prototype.

I asked them to conduct the following tasks:

The participant’s feedback and notes about their interactions were recorded in a notebook and analyzed after the sessions to provide next steps in the design process.

 

 

Research Analysis

The analysis revealed some areas of the platform that need attention. Listed below are the key findings and items for revision.

 

 

Future Steps

The next steps in our design process is to implement these findings to the next version of the prototype. The items that will be updated next are as follow:

 

 

 

What I Learned

Write about what I learned...