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One of our Research areas of interest.
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The experience of stumbling upon a good book while browsing the shelves of a bookstore hasn’t been replicated by technology, which historically has been more focused on search and recommendation algorithms.
But discovery is neither search nor recommendation. Our thesis is that it is a form of pattern recognition. We enter a state of perceptiveness, primed to find the thing that we don’t know we’re looking for. We quickly scan an array of items that have been filtered and sorted for us (as in the science fiction section of a bookstore with titles arranged by author) and we hone in on ones that interest us, perhaps due to the title or the cover design, and dive in for a closer look, perhaps reading the back cover or flicking through pages.
The online equivalent should allow us to select the filter and sort criteria and then present us with visual information so that our brain can do it’s work.