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a lesson courtesy of amazon windowshop: you can’t control serendipity

Started by robzand · 8 months ago

Amazon recently released a new beta service, “windowshop”. The service allows users to browse new, popular, and promotional items in a serendipitous fashion. The experience is introduced quite politely, users are encouraged to “lose themselves̶ ... Continue reading »

3 comments

  • Robert S.

    8 months ago

    Great post. It looks like you can beat the flaw you describe by clicking on the item you want to look at instead of using your arrow keys - however, that's not the model you're presented with upon coming to the site.
    reply
  • Andrew Green

    8 months ago

    This is great, Rob. It highlights one essential characteristic of a serendipitous experience -'skim-ability' That is, creating an ultra-low ability for a user to browse content in a skimming fashion. I would argue that we even need to go beyond diagonal control... but it would be a nice start to get away from 'scientific discovery' and towards 'serendipitous discovery'.
    reply
  • robzand

    8 months ago

    i am fine with going beyond diagonal. just give me some type of "i'm feeling lucky" mechanism
    reply

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