It’s not “What’s Best”, it’s “What’s Best for You”

We had some discussion in the office yesterday about some of the posts in the Hunch forums.  We’ve been beyond pleased about the amount of forum suggestions and feedback we’ve received.  This input is invaluable in helping us define and prioritize what to keep, emphasize, refine, change, or improve.

It’s also been great to see an increasing amount of direct interaction in the forums between Hunch users.  For example, we’ve noted a growing number of forum posts from users asking for a recommendation related to a topic, with other users generally responding with good advice.  So one user might post: “Which handheld camera might be best for a low-light situation?” or “Do you think my 5 year old is ready for kindergarten even if he can’t sit still for a reasonable period of time?”  Sure, these questions could be answered by ‘playing’ Hunch’s topics in the traditional way, but – why not? – this alternative approach to posting a question and getting an answer is perfectly fine, too.

There are, however, a couple of types of questions we sometimes see in the forums which aren’t particularly well-suited to Hunch: questions of an absolute or factual nature.

An absolute question is something like: “What’s the best Chinese restaurant in Des Moines?” or “What’s the best museum in Paris?”  The first answer to questions like those is simply: “It depends.”  Are you looking for great Chinese take-out or a Chinese restaurant offering a white tablecloth experience?  Do you want a Paris museum that’s good for kids, known for contemporary art, or in a building of renowned architectural importance?

Hunch is also not the place to go to find cut-and-dry facts.  To figure out “On what day of the week does Christmas fall this year?” or “How many flight miles is it between New York and LA?”, we would cheerfully direct you to your nearest preferred search engine or answer site, which is exactly what we do for these types of queries.

So in a nutshell, Hunch isn’t meant to tell you what’s best for everyone, and isn’t meant to provide you with rote facts.  But for offering you smart recommendations that are customized to you and based on some serious math and data?  Now you’re talkin’.  And this is how we summed all that up in a phrase: “With Hunch, it’s never about simply ‘What’s Best?’, but rather: ‘What’s Best for You?’”