Alka AsthanaMay 4, 20202 min readOf Groups & SortsUpdated: Oct 26, 2020All these years, I resisted what I called was the trap of “online shopping”.But 2013 saw me progressively become an online shopper.The first time it was out of necessity - or so I thought.I wear wide width shoes. These aren’t as readily available in stores. In the past, only Nordstrom could come to my rescue.Next time round, it was because of the t-shirt style that I prefer. I like scoop necks; alas, stores tend to carry more of round necks and v-necks.The other day, I went online shopping because I like pure cotton pants; & of course I don’t like it mixed with lycra!My online shopping sprees increased; so did the rigidity of my choices.I had reasons to not adapt; I had discovered a way out.With time, my search prowess increased. I happily went pounding the searches on my keyboard:Women t-shirt cotton black …Women t-shirt cotton black scoop neck …Heck, men don’t wear scoop necks & I certainly don’t like redundancies. I am willing to sacrifice performance over elegance. So I drop “Women” from the search stringBlack cotton scoop neck t-shirt …If only I could sort the result by fitting style; wouldn’t I love to first see slim fits followed by relaxed fit.Can't believe it; they have not given me a mechanism to optimize my query. How limiting!It dawns on me – I am almost playing mind games-and having too much fun at that.Wonder what would happen when keyword searches are widely replaced with natural language searches?Black scoop neck t-shirts… exclude … include … rule based ... not cost based please!Evidently, I love elegance in my attire & in my queries – no semantics here.Amazon ... Google ... Yahoo .. are you up for it?#artificialintelligence
All these years, I resisted what I called was the trap of “online shopping”.But 2013 saw me progressively become an online shopper.The first time it was out of necessity - or so I thought.I wear wide width shoes. These aren’t as readily available in stores. In the past, only Nordstrom could come to my rescue.Next time round, it was because of the t-shirt style that I prefer. I like scoop necks; alas, stores tend to carry more of round necks and v-necks.The other day, I went online shopping because I like pure cotton pants; & of course I don’t like it mixed with lycra!My online shopping sprees increased; so did the rigidity of my choices.I had reasons to not adapt; I had discovered a way out.With time, my search prowess increased. I happily went pounding the searches on my keyboard:Women t-shirt cotton black …Women t-shirt cotton black scoop neck …Heck, men don’t wear scoop necks & I certainly don’t like redundancies. I am willing to sacrifice performance over elegance. So I drop “Women” from the search stringBlack cotton scoop neck t-shirt …If only I could sort the result by fitting style; wouldn’t I love to first see slim fits followed by relaxed fit.Can't believe it; they have not given me a mechanism to optimize my query. How limiting!It dawns on me – I am almost playing mind games-and having too much fun at that.Wonder what would happen when keyword searches are widely replaced with natural language searches?Black scoop neck t-shirts… exclude … include … rule based ... not cost based please!Evidently, I love elegance in my attire & in my queries – no semantics here.Amazon ... Google ... Yahoo .. are you up for it?#artificialintelligence