When you go to Microsoft’s Live.com search engine starting today you will see something different. Live Search is now showing a full background image behind their minimalistic search interface with what they are calling “hotspots”. These hotspots (see images below) are interactive regions on the background image that, when rolled over with the users mouse, show image related search results. The Live Search teams calls this new feature “both engaging and a great place to start a search.” This new “feature” is an extension of the “simple and clean” home page release Live Search made last spring. Live makes it clear that the focus is on the search box and loads that first, then the background image with hotspots.
“Our goal for the home page is to find the best way to enhance users’ sense of discovery, surprise, and delight while balancing engineering realities for a great user experience.” The Live Search team goes on to say. “We think the new design is a great start, but there’s more to come, with lots of interesting directions that we’ll be exploring in our next releases of the home page.”
Ok, sure these hotspots caught my attention the first time I saw them. However, since they aren’t targeted to the user or their search results they become random and irrelevant to the majority of people heading to Live.com. Don’t get me wrong, the few people who do actually rely on Live.com for their primary search activities might interact with the hotspots here and there. But, in the end how is this adding anything to the search experience? Feels almost like Google’s “I Feel Lucky”.
Now, you know what would be cool? What about changing the image daily based on a logged-in users profile / search patterns? For example, I am into sports and have listed the New York Rangers as my favorite sports team. The background one day can be an image of various Rangers with hotspots leading to the first 3 results for term “New York Rangers”. For me, that would be cooler and actually make me want to visit Live.com to see what my image is for the day.
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Another *yawn* from the Live Search team