A section about how acceptance of original ideas.
If we look at relevance there maybe an answer to getting people to understand and accept original concepts. With a mixture of convention and familiarity to make people feel safe and more accepting to their new invention; a left column navigation on the results page, I think that the designers of bing managed to make an original concept just seem natural. Of course this was the result of extensive testing to make sure that this would work, but for the result to be a success, isn’t it worth it? Does this also mean that being original doesn’t necessarily mean being different?
An original idea disguised as a convention, maybe this is the best way to get people to accept originality in design in a time where it seems too scary to try something new. The backing up with research certainly did the bing team good for a successful result, as they are now a lot more popular than the live search ever was. It is also intuitive enough to make me question why I am so loyal to a search engine. Researching to prove quantitatively that an original concept is the right move may be another lesson to learn here, as well as disguising an original idea between two conventions.
Stefan Price 