Kvisu.com - Search with a Cartographic Twist

Kvisu, short for KartOOvisu puts a spin on KartOO’s visual metas-earch engine using cartography as its inspiration. Each search term entered into Kvisu’s engine comes up with text based results, as well as a visual map of thematic terms. They compare it to a typical city map. You use the map to guide your way along streets, bridges and landmarks. You use Kvisu’s cartographic interface to guide your way through database results, and thematics which link to actual web pages. Search ‘iPhone’ for example, and you’ll get the usual text-based results, but the right hand side provides a map of key words and themes like, fanboys, blogs, macworld, emails, or ipod. This allows you to visual navigate and filter results rather than aimlessly clicking through link after link. Kvisu also provides a search history and chance to rate each link. It’s available in French and English.

“Exactly as we memorize a walk in the countryside, our brain can use the visual indices of the information map to locate itself. KartOO develops, in particular, favourites management systems where the user him/herself places his data. The question “where did I put that?” makes sense if we located information by a color and if we placed it in a corner of the map!”

Kvisu is an innovative search engine that employs cartographic means to help the user visualize and filter his search. It’s a great tool and really breaks through the usual, old text based search.

Are search results accurate? Are they consistent? Will the slow load time effect user’s satisfaction? Why not automatically adjust the default language?