CUIL – A More Useful Search?

CUIL is a new search engine that’s been getting a lot of press these last few days because it’s different, it’s not Google, and it’s supposed to be a more useful tool. The premise is some ex-Googlers have decided to make a new and improved Search Engine, one that (I’m assuming) has had some consideration about users who need to find stuff, and what is user-friendly for them. In this regard, the user interface is supposed to be different (better?) than Google’s. Ever wondered what David must have felt when he faced up to Goliath? Just ask the team at CUIL!

Have you tried CUIL? How would you measure the overall usability? And how would you compare CUIL’s usability and ease-of-use vs Google’s, or Yahoo’s?

CUIL uses a multi-columnar format to present data, but Google uses a single column format (but with ads along the top, side and bottom. So, if you were to create a usability study to compare ease-of-use for CUIL vs let’s say Google, how would you proceed?

• Would you measure both the ability to analyze search results, as well as the ability to determine the relevancy of the results?
• Would you analyze the time it takes to find specific information on each search engine?
• Would you measure the overall satisfaction of interacting with the search results only, or interacting with search results AND finding the relevant information, or only determining the usability of actually finding the relevant information?

Since the fomatting of the search results of both engines is quite different, would it even be possible to consider evaluating both with a single set of tasks?

What do you think? How would you organize the usability study?