How to find what you did not even know you wanted?

In the prequels to this article, ‘Why web services need to profile you and why everybody loses’ and ‘You don’t know what you don’t know: can we live without personalization?’, we talked about why personalization is important both for the businesses and the users, we introduced the concept of content Horizon and why it can be a problem, and we explained why today’s personalization technologies create that Horizon by their very nature. But does it have to be this way? Is there a technology that would let you zoom in what you want and leave the rest behind -- which in effect is a form of personalization -- and yet, does not de facto introduce a noticeable content Horizon? That is what we will explore here.

We need help understanding and articulating what we want!

So what would such technology be like? The real issue is that we need help understanding and articulating what we want, but we don’t want someone or something making all the decisions for us. It is those decisions that create the de facto Horizon; that is, if you are not making those yourself. And why can’t you just word out what you want from the beginning? Well, in most cases you only have a vague idea of what you want and you lack the imagination to think about what is beyond what you know; you just can’t make it up! Usually you don’t know enough at the beginning to clearly understand the various angles of a topic, and thus you don’t know which of these angles would be of interest to you now. So you have a limited idea of which keywords matter to start with. But if you were to see the relevant keywords in a topic, you would a priori know which ones are interesting to you and respond to your needs or curiosity. You would be able to understand how the various sub-topics and adjacent topics articulate, and you would be able to start understanding what it is that would satisfy you at this moment. After a few iterations of refining your thoughts you would know exactly how to ask for what you are looking for, with exquisite precision. You would also have the words for it so that you can express it. Although that last part may be a given as words are the fabric of thoughts (but this is the topic of a philosophical dissertation in itself).

With current technologies, this process of figuring out what you want and putting it into words is manual and tedious, and thus people do not do it unless they really have to. You have to go explore topics and figure them out enough to understand them and get the matching vocabulary. These technologies do not help you understand what you want. So the only resort left to narrow down the space of possibilities without the user being able to tell you more, is to guess the search intent and context of a search. This guessing is based on external parameters such as trending topics, information about the user and his interests (profile) and a number of other more or less esoteric factors. Such systems can also use statistical semantic associations to pick out the most likely dimensions associated with a topic. All of this with the goal of somehow reading your mind about what it is that you are after even though you don’t know it yourself. One can see how this is can only predict within what is already known and thus only create the Horizon we talked about. In addition, you may satisfy yourself with a partial match from a lack of articulating what you are truly after, and not knowing there could be better matches. And this summarizes why today’s technologies are this way. They are the next best thing short of the user telling you explicitly what they want.

So now, what if you could start with what you know, no matter how vague it might be, and get presented with surrounding keywords for your topic, showing sub-topics, various dimensions of the topic and neighboring topics? And what if you could iterate, picking out the words that make sense to you and setting aside those that don’t at each iteration? This would give you an easy way to articulate your thoughts iteratively, and yet you would be making all the key decisions to guide yourself where you want in line with your current state of mind. And what if it were streamlined for mobile by eliminating the need to type in most cases? It could look something like this:

Such a technology exists and it is called XSquizIt!™. And you can see it showcased in the webSquiz Omni for Wikipedia™ app which you can try out from the App Store or Google Play. As stated, this app is focusing on Wikipedia, but this can and will be extended to a wider content.

Basically the XSquizIt!™ technology allows a user to explore topics by navigating relevant keywords, so that they can ultimately articulate their thoughts and figure out what they truly want. It is a way to guide the brain by piquing its innate curiosity, while still letting it wander to a destination that was unpredictable to today’s personalization models and even unknown to the person doing it. That is, until that person lands some place in line with their current state of mind. Such technology, in effect, also restores true serendipity, which is mostly impossible with current personalization and recommendation engines.

The best of both worlds: recommendations with the power to easily take over when you want to!

Of course, you still need help to know where to start or you would keep going back to what you know; and in that sense XSquizIt!™ is complementary to existing technologies and products. But when you want to know more about something, maybe something that you ran into before and that you are curious about or that you need, or maybe something that you are reading at the moment, then it seamlessly works. With it you can expand your mind on the spot with almost no effort. Especially on mobile devices where it is so awkward and cramped, and where time may be limited. In effect, you get the best of both worlds: recommendations from existing technologies with the power to easily take over when you want to go beyond. You are now able to find what you did not know you wanted, and it starts by figuring out what you want!

Finding what you want starts by figuring out what you want!

Creating such innovative approaches to go beyond your Horizon and restore serendipity is exactly what our company webSquiz is exploring. We are introducing new ways to discover content and articulate what you want as you explore. We started with Wikipedia to show it can work and are diligently working on expanding our content to a wide set of coffee table articles. Check us out at webSquiz.com. Or visit us on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.