ImageFlow–A New Way To Search Images From Microsoft Research

Microsoft has releases a paper on a new way to search and browse images on web. Here is the description from the paper.

Traditional grid and list representations of image search results are the dominant interaction paradigms that users face on a daily basis, yet it is unclear that such paradigms are well-suited for experiences where the user‟s task is to browse images for leisure, to discover new information or to seek particular images to represent ideas. We introduce ImageFlow, a novel image search user interface that explores a different alternative to the traditional presentation of image search results. ImageFlow presents image results on a canvas where we map semantic features (e.g., relevance, related queries) to the canvas‟ spatial dimensions (e.g., x, y, z) in a way that allows for several levels of engagement – from passively viewing a stream of images, to seamlessly navigating through the semantic space and actively collecting images for sharing and reuse. We have implemented our system as a fully functioning prototype, and we report on promising, preliminary usage results.

This is what it does,

We present and implement ImageFlow, a novel image search interface that explores an alternate approach to satisfying core user activities around image search tasks. ImageFlow streams images towards the user in a 3D-like environment and supports both the passive and active exploration of a search result set. A user can type an initial query into a search box and then passively observe images as they flow towards the user. A user can also interact with the system by steering through the flow of images with the mouse. ImageFlow also introduces a new way to explore different semantic and image attributes by mapping them onto its canvas‟s spatial dimensions. 

More details here.