January 13, 2009

How would you describe your favorite drink to a friend?

Right now, I’m running a user survey for GarnishBar to elicit ideas about the when, where and how people find cocktail recipes.

One of the most interesting questions for me is “How would you describe your favorite drink to a friend?”The question seems innocuous at first: a simple request.

However, this question has an agenda.

We know that people search for drinks in many different ways. At first glance, one might assume people mostly take a purely rational approach. They might pick the liquors, a few mixers, and so on. In fact, some of our research suggested this is the prevailing search pattern. Looking deeper, we begin to think that this mindset is almost vestigial–an artifact based on how they have learned to search.

We want to do better. And we wanted to confirm this with the potential users before we went too far.

The good news is that the responses we’re receiving jibes well with a few distinguishing features we’re planning for GarnishBar. We’re thinking about different and novel ways to find drinks. Not just based on the liquor or the mixer, but something different, unexpected, and more user-friendly altogether.

So, I’ve already said too much on this. The survey is still running and I don’t want to bias the results any more than this post may have done. If you haven’t had a chance yet, go to http://ow.ly/304 and complete the survey. It will only take a few mins.

Disclosure: I’m helping build GarnishBar.