Designing Search (part 2): As-you-type suggestions by Tony Russell-Rose.
From the post:
Have you ever tried the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google? The idea is, of course, that Google will take you directly to the result you want, rather than return a list of results. It’s a simple idea, and when it works, it seems like magic.
(graphic omitted)
But most of the time we are not so lucky. Instead, we submit a query and review the results; only to find that they’re not quite what we were looking for. Occasionally, we review a further page or two of results, but in most cases it’s quicker just to enter a new query and try again. In fact, this pattern of behaviour is so common that techniques have been developed specifically to help us along this part of our information journey. In particular, three versions of as-you-type suggestions—auto-complete, auto-suggest, and instant results—subtly guide us in creating and reformulating queries.
Tony guides the reader through auto-complete, auto-suggest, and instant results in his usual delightful manner. He illustrates the principles under discussion with well known examples from the WWW.
A collection of his posts should certainly be supplemental (if not primary) reading for any course on information interfaces.