KartOO: Mapping Search Intuitively
Posted: October 27, 2009
Moreover, we also need to consider that some Internet users might not be aware or intentionally looking for resources according to their type of intelligence when they go online to find information, so our role as search engine designers is to facilitate their search by providing them the best means to obtain the best results in a short time.
What are the strengths of [the cartographic] approach? What are the risks or the potential consequences of it?
Information mapping needs to be used properly to be effective. One must understand that it doesn’t replace a list but develops new usages. For strategic units in a company, for instance, it provides a new strategy [one can use to] watch competitors. Instead of typing a keyword on a search engine, you target a competitor by placing him in the center of a map and around him you locate major stakeholders, subsidiaries, key technologies and patents. The user can deploy the map and discover other competitors he had not considered. This new search strategy is called “serendipity” and mapping is the ideal tool to take advantage of it.
Other advantages of a cartographic approach are managing efficiently large amounts of diverse information and outlining relations and interconnections between subjects/individuals in complex networks. Applied to search, like in Kartoo.com or our other products, it helps users to easily identify relevant information and explore concepts more in depth. Thus, another advantage is that individuals can focus on in-depth thinking and obtain a wide perspective about a subject. Information visualization also facilitates collaborative work and training/learning activities.
More than risks, we have to consider it is a way to access information, so there might be less suitable applications. For instance if you are working with legal information, you might find it hard to chunk it considering all the individual exceptions by law; the map will become too complex and large to understand. Or for specialized professions, information mapping could be generic and restrictive.
A positive consequence is that both developers and users are developing a new way of thinking towards information, so we can really take advantage of all the data we are generating and storing every day. We propose information visualization, but with the increasing amount, variety and sources of content - blogs, websites, forums, intranets, documents in paper or electronic format, audio, video, etc. — we will see the emergence of new application alternatives to improve the way we manage information.
How have your clients benefited from this approach?
For our clients, the most common challenge is managing the information overload and its diversity to find quickly the best results and make better decisions; sometimes the subject is searching for documents, individuals with specific competences, or trying to identify stakeholders and flows within a social network. For instance, for the United Nations Department of Environment, we developed a visual information system to facilitate searching their databases, which contain large number of papers published in several languages and are scattered across several continents.
For Ubisoft, like other renowned companies, it became particularly time consuming searching for the person with the best competences through the thousands of resumes they receive daily. Thus, the company implemented K.Network to search their database through a visual map interface that located individuals matching the search criterion; people with similar competences are positioned close to each other in the results map. An internal dictionary with abbreviations and technical vocabulary runs in parallel while conducting a search to secure finding the best candidate. A similar application was developed for L’Oreal.
How does KartOO feel the Web/search/interface could be improved? [What is the] philosophy or set of ideas that guide[s] the organization’s efforts?
Our feeling is that there is not “one” ideal interface, but that interfaces will evolve towards more graphic and interactive systems. The first interfaces were designed by computer scientists, who were used to work with large amounts of text. The classic example is Google, with their highly mathematical (Boolean) list of results and syntax.
[Future] interfaces will be a sum of improvements of the current interfaces; the best example in this subject is Apple. At KartOO, we consider that our contribution is developing technological bricks that display maps in between these new interfaces.
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