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theory on demand
4.5 From ‘Brand Identity’ to ‘Participative Interface’ Search, archiving and retrieval of data are procedures so complex that under-standing them fully requires an amount of knowledge and explanation that are beyond the scope of this book. We will, however, look in detail at some aspects of their functioning. And we should, in any case, have a closer look at the interface since that is the element which is put forward and managed by Google as representing its core image, whereas algorithm performances and the database architecture are components that remain invisible to the user. In the case of Google, The Interface is mostly the ‘blank box’26, the empty window where the user puts down his or her query, or ‘search intention’ on Google’s universal homepage, which is designed in such a way as to exude welcome, reassurance, closeness. The universal functionality of Google’s homepage stems from it being iterated across 104 languages and dialects, and it being customizable in 113 different countries as per 2007. In some of those countries, the interaction model remains the same and unifies all search behaviors into one single, homogeneous format. Going to Google’s homepage, one first notices a linear interface with key elements, each with a very specific and universally recognizable function. This frame will accept search queries of various nature and complexity, from simple key words (e.g. ‘Ippolita’) to a more complex assemblage of words in brackets (e.g. ‘authors collective’). It also allows for narrowing the search down to something more precise: to a particular site, or a specific language, or a particular domain, or only to documents in a specified format, and so forth (depending on the level of specificity one is aiming at). We can consider it to be an example of a successful interface, in so far that it manages to fulfill the ambitious goal of assigning a positive value to an otherwise white space in a page. The interface presents itself without any adornment; it is almost empty, or rather, filled with only one empty element: the ‘blank box’, which reassures the user, and induces her/ him to activity. It wards off loss of attention and her/ him leaving the site due to either an absence of handles [i.e. something to hold on], or, conversely, because there are too many visual stimuli. This way, the confusion that often goes together with pages filled to the brim (suffering apparently from the ‘horror vacui’ syndrome; trying to be attractive with a flurry of banners, graphics, animations, etc., only to communicate anxiety to the user in the process) is avoided. Actually, surfing is not really possible on a Google page: all its different components have a purely functional purpose. Their goal is to have the user access a service, and not to lead her/ him on a journey; their usage engenders behaviors which subsequently turn into routines of search, and
26. A ‘black box’ is a device that can only be described in terms of inputs and outputs but whose inner logic - how inputs are transformed into outputs - cannot be known. In the context of our discussion then, ‘Black Box’ refers to the mechanism whereby inputs are processed into outputs according to a logic inaccessible to the user. The concept of ‘Blank box’ refers to a somewhat similar method, but it does so implicitly, hence ambiguously; for though being an ‘empty’ space it is nevertheless charged with highly differentiated meanings and research functions.