February 14, 2010
Hakia Bungles its Redesign
hakia Serves Up Comprehensive Universal Search in New Design , Search Engine Watch (Feb 11)
Hakia, the semantic search engine that is supposed to be able to discern meaning of query and answer, has changed its display of results. Whereas before it had segments on the page - somewhat in columns - for different types of sources - now it strings the "categories" down a very long page.
Search Engine Watch has some screenshots - these will help you know what to expect when you go to Hakia.
This is terrible design - you don't know what to expect first - might be news, might be web - you don't know if there are any credible sites unless you scroll further. The only control the searcher has is to contract and expand the sections. There are no clues at the top of the page as is normal at search engines. The results themselves are dense text with some faint highlighting. This design is very unfriendly. Also I fear that the direct connection to galleries has been dropped.
There is nothing attractive about this. hakia once had a design reminiscent of Ask.com's 3D. That was a fine model. This is not.
Posted by Gwen at February 14, 2010 07:37 PM