The simple answer to how Helioid benefits users is that Helioid represents information and information navigation in a more efficient manner. This gets a complex when looking at how each individual uses the internet and searches for information, but still the core is the same. A current issue with web search, as Google’s Marissa Mayer explains, is that it is undeveloped and not advanced, “Think of it like biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s: it’s a new science where we make big and exciting breakthroughs all the time.”
Some specific problems in this new science:
- No representation of relationships between search results on a content or conceptual level
- Information connections are “in the dark”
- No (or extremely little) representation of relationships between search results on a physical hyperlink level
- Searchers must play guessing game of coming up with correct keywords in order to get more relevant results
- No ability to refine search or to narrow in on correct result or concept
- Searchers must start over with every new search they execute
Some of the solutions Helioid provides:
- Clear representations of connections between search results
- On a concept level
- On a link level
- Clear representations of categories that a search result and groups of search results fall into
- Representation subject matter shared between different results for the same query
- Can refine search so and therefore do not have to start over from scratch
- Can eliminate results or terms from search results to refine search and zoom in on wanted information
- Can save results and search query and then continue searching later