Goo Labs’ search engine for Kawaii, things that are cute

Japan, arguably the world’s epicentre of cuteness, has the word ‘Kawaii’ to refer to an entity’s degree of cuteness. With this in mind, researchers at Goo Labs developed an unusual internet search engine – one which attempted to rank results according to how cute they were.

Details were provided in Chapter 12 of the 2012 book from CRC Press ‘Advances in Affective and Pleasurable Design’.

The Kawaii Search Engine is now up and running [at a new www address] but Improbable’s  endeavours to understand exactly how it outperforms other engines in the cuteness domain have met with little, if any, success.

Further info: A (roughly) translated Goo Labs press-release from 2011 can be found here.