The UX presentation of results directly affects how quickly you can ramp quality.

· Bits and Bobs 9/21/26
  • The UX presentation of results directly affects how quickly you can ramp quality.
    • The hardest is voice assistants.
    • You have a single-dimensional stream of output, that has to play at a fixed rate.
      • Even if a user could comprehend the audio at a faster rate, the audio unspools at a fixed rate.
      • The top answer had better be right.
      • Very unforgiving.
    • Reading a chat is a bit easier.
      • It's still uni-diretional, but the user's reading speed is naturally calibrated to their ability to comprehend.
      • That allows the user to consume the stream faster, and skim it.
    • Even better is ten blue links.
      • The user can quickly skim over the links, and then dive into the snippet if they need to.
      • The formatting makes it quick to skim across a multi-dimensional map of information.
      • As long as the answer is anywhere in the top 10, it's fine.
      • That also gives you a clear quality signal: if most people click on the result in position 3, it should move to position 0.