According to Peter Morville, we are “at the crossroads of ubiquitous computing and the Internet” however as he sees it, “the user experience is out of control,” and “findability” will become the real story moving forward. In a recent post on Read Write Web, Richard MacManus examines Morville’s ideas, particularily his notion of ambient findability—which Melville defines as “the quality of being locatable or navigable.” Ambient findability, Morville contends, becomes more and more fundamental as information overload increases and mobile devices play a greater role in our day-to-day activities.

Morville’s most recent book, appropriately titled Ambient Findability, explores his theories on user experience and information overload. The central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are critical components of the new world order. He further states that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices, and Internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future.

Search is among our most important and complex challenges. As the choice of first resort for many users and tasks, search is a defining element of the user experience. And, as a unique amalgam of content, metadata, technology and design, the search results interface demands intense cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Morville believes that the future will be about something beyond search—and that something is his “findability.” His conclusion is a broad call for greater innovation—the seeds of which he sees in both Google Book Search and EveryZing. As the wealth of information continues to expand and the line blurs between on and offline activity, search becomes increasingly complicated and multidimensional. Business intelligence systems, such as software built to find and sort based on patterns, will need to bring together taxonomies and tags so that browsing and search complement one another and enhance the user experience.

Search is not broken, however the search results leave much to be desired. Meta Data, which is really just “information about information”, will be one of the biggest growth areas this decade in terms of R&D and application development. The Semantic Web vision will only happen when content producer invest in technology and systems to automatically and consistently generate accurate meta-data for their content. This meta data becomes the key to “Ambient Findability” for all content across all formats and all devices.