Over the last couple weeks I’ve been talking more about the idea of handwriting search engine queries–and particularly about leveraging handwriting to ease the process of entering complicated text queries, such as math problems.
You can try out the Silverlight app at www.TabletPCPost.com/search and www.TabletPCPost.com/math for yourself if you haven’t done so yet. It lets you handwrite queries within the browser (using a stylus or a mouse or other pointing device) and then recognizes your handwriting on a remote server and then sends off the recognition results to Google when you’re ready.
Supporting handwriting in a search engine may seem esoteric, but the idea gets really interesting when you look how it could enable a wider variety of queries, such as math or physics or chemistry problems. Here the idea is to facilitate more “query types” that often are seeking more help or particular answers than “search” per se. By supporting these additional query types, the search engine expands its notion of being an authority source. If you want to know about xyz, go here is the idea.
Anyway, so here is a mockup of one way that I could see handwritten queries integrated into Google or Live or whatever search engine. One way is to offer a landing page which is 100% designed for ink. Another is to provide an integrated approach which does not get in the way of the majority of text users.
So let’s say at Google.com or the academic search version that Google provided a small pen icon like this:
Tap on the pen button and the default text field could collapse and an alternate inkable surface appears:
The user then could handwrite their query in the panel with the recognized text being returned from a remote server:
Once the query is properly formulated, the user presses the Search button and gets their search results.
To get back to the default text field they could refresh the page or tap on the text icon.
Handwritten queries make even more sense where it can be tedious and error prone to enter the queries textually. Take math problems, for instance:
And now think about an answer engine that shelves your handwritten “queries” for access later. Makes quite a bit of sense with ink since the queries can become very complicated. And think about other problem types. Imagine a query that returns interactive plots. Formatted and publishable diagrams. And on and on. Can you also imagine how this could be a nice entry point for a partner infrastructure? I can. I’m getting ahead of myself.
Of course, there’s no doubt that integrating in a Silverlight or Flash panel to a heavily used query page is going to increase the page loads for more people than will actually use it. But then again, as more and more answer services are integrated into the search engine this ratio could change. Initially non-integrated handwritten queries probably make the most sense, followed by certain query pages–such as those for students, engineers, or other specific markets.
If you’d like to comment on this idea you can do so on my other blog here.