Google's Usability Chief On Ideas Having to Be Discoverable and Use "Control F"

In a New Scientist article, Google’s Dan Russell talks about his job, discoverability of ideas, and more. Dan also mentions a super interesting fact that we’ve heard from him before (it’s worth repeating) and something that many of us have shared during presentations for years, the POWER of the Control+F (find) feature. It’s one of MANY tools and techniques info pros can and should be sharing with our users. This is a great example of a tool that can be shared quickly with powerful and time saving results that are clearly visible from the first time it’s used.
Russell’s comment and findings about the Control+F feature also is a good reminder that many of the tools and techniques we use on a very regular basis are still unknown to many.
Here’s One Question and Answer from the Interview:

New Scientist: What findings surprised you the most?
Dan Russell: We have found that there are some surprisingly basic search techniques that people just don’t know about. I interviewed a bus driver who was searching for a transportation rule for a test. She was scrolling line-by-line through a 100-page web document, so I asked her why she didn’t use “control+F” to search by keyword. It turns out she didn’t know about this absolutely basic browser function. Amazed by this, we ran a survey that found 90 per cent of people don’t know about it.

Read the Complete Interview with Google’s Dan Russell
See Also: Crazy: 90 Percent of People Don’t Know How to Use CTRL+F (by Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic)
From August 18, 2011.

Filed under: Interviews, Patrons and Users, Profiles, Resources