The world of search and discovery is rapidly changing, and innovation in that area could advance in a variety of directions. It's possible search will become less about serving up answers, and more about decision making and helping people to ask better questions, said Peter Morville, president of Semantic Studios, and author of Search Patterns. Or the future of search could be about mashups and visualizations that help people better understand the information they are seeking, he added.

"We need to keep looking at ways to redefine the problems, to reframe how we think about search and discovery," said Morville during a Nov. 17 keynote at KM World, a knowledge management conference in Washington, D.C.

The reality is that as the amount of data grows, the need for search will grow in importance; and as the sensors for defining the users grow--through social and location-based tools--the ability to improve search will grow. All of these ideas should shape the way content managers and search vendors think about information architecture, said Morville.

He added that he's been experimenting with different ways to show a user-centered view of what multi-channel search opportunities are out there. He said mapping search patterns is central to better understanding this issue and has allowed him to "take the blinders off." Similarly, he's been doing more sketching to understand the ways people search.

He reminded content managers that search is also, "part of the broader challenge of user-experience design. So, it's not enough to optimize for usability. We should be worrying about other qualities, like desirability, findability, accessibility, credibility and so forth."

Improving and building the search technology and best practices of the future takes acute attention to detail, as well as the ability to predict what's ahead and to reframe those strategies for different environments, Morville said.

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