Use a captcha that doesn’t look like the scrambled love child of some random word string and a Jackson Pollack painting: Seriously, I would rather you ask me to do long division to prove I am human than ask me to unscramble some vocabulary vomit covered by a spirograph picture some three year old cranked out. After I fail a captcha three or four times, I start to wonder if I really am human…

Don’t require ridiculous passwords: Unless I am registering for a NASA mission control computer or signing up for an email list that includes nuclear launch codes, anything that requires a password can be letters and numbers. I should not have to type out a password that looks like something with 4 symbols and a capital/lower-case letter mix that a 13 year old girl would send in a text message to her friends. If I have to write down my 37 character password, I think that kind of defeats the purpose of security.

Microsoft has released a beta version of its newest search feature: Tafiti. Essentially, this is a visual search tool built on Microsoft Live Search and Microsoft Silverlight technology: rather than just listing out our search results, Tafiti creates an interactive searching experience that allows you to search for websites, images, news, books, and RSS feeds at the same time with a stunning graphical interface that is Vista-like in its design.  It features drag-and-drop saving of search results, labeling and compiling tools and also presents an option for “Tree View”, which lacks a bit in the practicality sector, but is very aesthetically pleasing.  Basically, a tree grows and each branch has the text of a web result on it; you can narrow or widen the tree as you want in order to narrow or broaden the search criteria.  This also comes with a full-screen option and scroll buttons to rotate the tree.  I’m not sure when I would ever use this view while actually searching for something, but it sure makes it look good!  This is definitely one of the more fun search applications, I’ve ever encountered.

The best review I’ve encountered for this new tool is from Matt Dickman, which provides a walkthrough of Tafiti’s features. I recommend checking out his site and watching his review below. I will agree with many of his sentiments about it, especially that using Silverlight as the base program fro this search tool could prove to be the Achilles heel of an otherwise awesome program.

In order to make Tafiti a truly viable option in the search engine world, Microsoft will either have to allow it to be adapted to Adobe Flash or seriously step up its distribution of Silverlight. Another user option that would be amazing, but will surely never materialize would be the option to select your own search engine to return your results. Perhaps someone will develop a plugin in the future that would allow such a switch. But all-in-all, Tafiti is an awesome tool that shows that Microsoft is still capable of revolutionizing a field if it really tries! It seems that when companies position themselves at the top f thier market, they slow down thier innovation and trade risky, revolutionary ideas for tame, mediocre, and basic features. Perhaps Tafiti is the beginning of a shift back to the trendy cutting-edge of user experience…maybe Microsoft will someday decide to give Apple a run for its money with design and usability, but I think it will be an uphill battle for them.

Courtesy of Matt Dickman at Techno//Marketer