Part One: The reality of what's out there
We want instant gratification
It's cheap and easy to switch providers
Little white lies
3.6 million US adults in 2007 lost $3.2 billion between 2006 and 2007 in identity theft
Remembering account details is difficult
Part Two: Improving the essence of registration
Immersive Registration
Connect with your users
Ask only necessary questions
Only use unique IDs if necessary - communication, banking & finance - no meaningful need for a unique ID for commerce transactions
Use email or another common ID
Respect your user's locale
Use CATPTCHA wisely (completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart)
Provide audio version for the visually impaired
Allow user to request a different image
Beware of color-blindness limitations
Use CAPTCHA to protect commodities like usernames
Part Three: Dealing with forgotten credentials
Register --> Use --> Forget
Account recovery mechanisms
Email
Sends email with current or temporary password
Quickest method
Assumes user controls their email account
Challenge
Asks for answer to a secret question in order to reset password
Prone to repeated errors
Works best when account information is up-to-date
Predefined questions often have easy-to-guess answers
Custom questions often contain, describe, or state the answer
Forensic
Confirms account activity and details in order to reset password
Verified actions only known by the account owner
Safest method
Most difficult to implement
Email recovery tips
Put the user in control
Think of life events
Be flexible
Allow alternate paths
Summary
Mindset
User want to retain their privacy and may be worried about iD theft
Registration
Build a relationship prior to registration
Be personable - use humor if appropriate
Explain the value of questions if they may be seen as out of context
Use an immersive registration process when possible
Account recovery
Put the user in control of account recovery
Remind users that their account may contain old information
Use human support when possible
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Information Horizons: a new technique
Users information behavior - what are the users information needs and goal, what is the content that is relevant, and what are the patterns that provide the ability to meet those needs?
Beyond this, what is the context this fits within? What are the users understanding of the web site and how does it compare to other sites?
So this technique is designed to bridge these two, at a inexpensive cost and low learning curve.
Need a better approach to get at this bigger picture than focus groups.
Information Horizons approach.
Based on book published in 2005. Theory proposed by Diane Sanderburg. They took this concept from the theory and developed a method to use it.
Format 1 interviewee, 1 interviewer.
Equipment: 1 large posterboard, markers to draw on the board
Steps:
1 - draw yourself in the middle of the paper. Provide the context you are asking for - do not provide specific type or site or anything - similar to a scenario. So "Recall an incident where you were trying to find information on a company"
Then have them talk about the experience, have them tell you a story.
Use the paper to show the resources. Use one color for these resources.
2 - change colors, and expand the experience - generalize the experience. By starting with a specific situation, you ground the context in reality. Now you are expanding into a more general situation, so they will do a better job. Add the target site at this point. Probe on it a bit.
3 - now probe onto the surprising serendipitous places they find information. Places that they look or found information elsewhere that was unexpected.
Analysis - look for where the target site appears in the drawing, early or late. You are gathering contextual information around this.
Detailed analysis - review recorded sessions, do content analysis, look for major themes.
This looks like a simple technique we could bring inside and start to use. I will ask the presenters for their slides.
Beyond this, what is the context this fits within? What are the users understanding of the web site and how does it compare to other sites?
So this technique is designed to bridge these two, at a inexpensive cost and low learning curve.
Need a better approach to get at this bigger picture than focus groups.
Information Horizons approach.
Based on book published in 2005. Theory proposed by Diane Sanderburg. They took this concept from the theory and developed a method to use it.
Format 1 interviewee, 1 interviewer.
Equipment: 1 large posterboard, markers to draw on the board
Steps:
1 - draw yourself in the middle of the paper. Provide the context you are asking for - do not provide specific type or site or anything - similar to a scenario. So "Recall an incident where you were trying to find information on a company"
Then have them talk about the experience, have them tell you a story.
Use the paper to show the resources. Use one color for these resources.
2 - change colors, and expand the experience - generalize the experience. By starting with a specific situation, you ground the context in reality. Now you are expanding into a more general situation, so they will do a better job. Add the target site at this point. Probe on it a bit.
3 - now probe onto the surprising serendipitous places they find information. Places that they look or found information elsewhere that was unexpected.
Analysis - look for where the target site appears in the drawing, early or late. You are gathering contextual information around this.
Detailed analysis - review recorded sessions, do content analysis, look for major themes.
This looks like a simple technique we could bring inside and start to use. I will ask the presenters for their slides.
Becoming a UX Coach
This is focused on being a consultant and coaching your clients. Not really very focused on us, aside from our relationship with HFI.
Can feel like we have hit a brick wall within the practice. Not making a giant leap in impact.
The traditional approach to management has its roots in an autocratic command and control approach. This is imprinted in us in elementary school and we expect it.
Coaching is more like counseling, so will not always work. It requires two way communication and willingness to work together.
Business acumen - we get MBA's to help us learn their language.
Frustrating thing is this never seems to go away, we always have to explain what it is that we do, why it is needed.
Transformational Coaching: What?
The are of assisting people to enhance their effectiveness in a way they feel helped.
When?
Need to be seen as a partner, not a provider.
How does this work?
Coaching Steps
1st step: grow
Set a goal + reality which maps to Research + Discovery - seek first to understand (Covey)
Tools for UX work that help at this stage: usability testing, card sorting, analytics, competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation
Option + will maps to Alignment.
Tools for UX - get commitment to make changes.
2nd step: Modeling, training, simulation
UX - teach others to do the usability testing.
3rd step: Gestalt - mind shift from doing to being
UX - listening and planning together.
4th step: Relationship building
5th step: Trust and Honesty
Trusted advisor
The heart of transformation
1 changing mindsets
Think less like a boss and more like a coach.
2 ego stuff
move from an ego driven state to a centered state
3 becoming more centered
4 a matter of style
collaborating, creating , clarifying, conducting - I am a creating person.
Creating
Strengths - enthusiastic, creative
Weakness - poor attention to detail
4 generational style
5 leadership by example + self disclosure
"what you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say"
So the second part is very applicable to what I do, and where we are headed. Check references.
Presentation at nform.ca/blog or slideshare.net
yvonne.shek@nform.ca
Can feel like we have hit a brick wall within the practice. Not making a giant leap in impact.
The traditional approach to management has its roots in an autocratic command and control approach. This is imprinted in us in elementary school and we expect it.
Coaching is more like counseling, so will not always work. It requires two way communication and willingness to work together.
Business acumen - we get MBA's to help us learn their language.
Frustrating thing is this never seems to go away, we always have to explain what it is that we do, why it is needed.
Transformational Coaching: What?
The are of assisting people to enhance their effectiveness in a way they feel helped.
When?
Need to be seen as a partner, not a provider.
How does this work?
Coaching Steps
1st step: grow
Set a goal + reality which maps to Research + Discovery - seek first to understand (Covey)
Tools for UX work that help at this stage: usability testing, card sorting, analytics, competitive analysis, heuristic evaluation
Option + will maps to Alignment.
Tools for UX - get commitment to make changes.
2nd step: Modeling, training, simulation
UX - teach others to do the usability testing.
3rd step: Gestalt - mind shift from doing to being
UX - listening and planning together.
4th step: Relationship building
5th step: Trust and Honesty
Trusted advisor
The heart of transformation
1 changing mindsets
Think less like a boss and more like a coach.
2 ego stuff
move from an ego driven state to a centered state
3 becoming more centered
4 a matter of style
collaborating, creating , clarifying, conducting - I am a creating person.
Creating
Strengths - enthusiastic, creative
Weakness - poor attention to detail
4 generational style
5 leadership by example + self disclosure
"what you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say"
So the second part is very applicable to what I do, and where we are headed. Check references.
Presentation at nform.ca/blog or slideshare.net
yvonne.shek@nform.ca
Designing for the anti social
Miles Rochford miles.rochford@gmail.com
IA since 2002, designing for the last 10 years working for Nokia.
Begins with the Panopticon model of prison. We are in the process of creating a social panopticon. We are allowing others to view us and we don't know when they are watching us or what they will do with it.
Ubiquity
Everywhere for everyone. We are always on-line. Consumption spreads faster today.
Eternity
Technology doesn't last forever.
By default, digital content is cheap to acquire, easy to keep and able to be rediscovered.
It now has distributed persistence.
Serendipity is a fairy-tale, it is magic.
You don't find it, it finds you.
Ambient Serendipity is discovering happy social coincidences.
Mediated serendipity is an attempt to create social luck, to generate joyful coincidences.
Bottom line: this is the environment we are building these social environments.
This presentation
Why do we share ourselves?
What implications does this have for design?
What can IAs do to create better social systems?
Facebook feed story - in the middle of a presentation, he needed to demo Facebook, and had not been on the site for a few days, so had no idea what would be in the feed. This led to this presentation.
Sharing the self
To live longer. Or at least long enough to pass on your genes.
Why share online?
Public vs Private space
Privacy used to be physical. Social delay controlled the speed of information distribution.
Sharing was about entering a physical space.
Venn diagram of private / public and semi-public semi-private
Consequences
Sharing information had consequences - it always has had, it always will have.
Social networks make it easier to share information and harder to control the distribution of information.
The great preponderance of people who are designing social functionality are not aware that is what they are doing.
Enter the IA
Making connections is what we do.
We can encourage positive outcomes through persuasive design.
Designing for the [anti-]social.
Story of uploading a photo to flickr of having a beer, boss sees it on the flickr stream, comments on it. Gets back to them via cell phone.
Unintended consequences
Can be positive or negative.
Surfacing possible consequences can help people think about negative effects.
Designers need to be more outcome-aware.
Gaming a system is a way of forcing an unintended consequence.
Ambient intimacy now seen as ambient exposure.
Harmlessness
Default to harmlessness
Provide ways of reducing the risk and extent of harm, through time delays and sensible defaults.
Different people have different ways of assessing risk and judging harmfulness.
Ensure all actors in a system are harmless.
Balance of community risk, versus individual risk.
Reciprocity
One of the most powerful human behaviours.
Lurking and stalking are often undesirable, but not everyone is a contributor.
"Bartersharing" as a form of social contract mutual sharing behavior to manage privacy.
Karma is a very good thing.
Deniability
Everyone lies. Around 25% of the time.
We all know that people lie, we don't need to be told.
'Plausible deniability' lest us create alternative explanations - often involving time and location.
Granularity
Use different ways of looking at the same information to preserve privacy and usefulness.
Blurring zooming and anonymizing can all provide benefits for privacy.
Accountability
Empower users to be accountable for their data.
Let users own their data.
Make their actions visible.
Example of flickr and photos, should use the highest level of privacy of the people in the photo, not just the photo taker.
23andme - genetics personal social network.
Emergence
Allow people to apply their own meaning.
Support emergent behaviour through flexible design, open APIs and social platforms
People can be evil.
We need evil personas to establish goals and design system to keep them from achieving their goals.
Difference
We are all individuals.
People are different, in diverse ways.
Supporting difference requires empathy.
Language is loaded with semantic meaning, especially for relationships and emotions.
We encode prejudice into our systems, without even thinking.
Think globally
Showed that the average avatar in second life consumes more power than the average person in Brazil.
Summary
Think about the consequences.
Embrace the social.
Practice empathy.
Be human.
Slides will be at http://slideshare.net/rochford
miles.rochford@gmail.com
Podcast will be up at Boxes and Arrows in the fairly near future.
IA since 2002, designing for the last 10 years working for Nokia.
Begins with the Panopticon model of prison. We are in the process of creating a social panopticon. We are allowing others to view us and we don't know when they are watching us or what they will do with it.
Ubiquity
Everywhere for everyone. We are always on-line. Consumption spreads faster today.
Eternity
Technology doesn't last forever.
By default, digital content is cheap to acquire, easy to keep and able to be rediscovered.
It now has distributed persistence.
"Remembering everything is strangely similar to forgetting everything."Serendipity
Serendipity is a fairy-tale, it is magic.
You don't find it, it finds you.
Ambient Serendipity is discovering happy social coincidences.
Mediated serendipity is an attempt to create social luck, to generate joyful coincidences.
Bottom line: this is the environment we are building these social environments.
This presentation
Why do we share ourselves?
What implications does this have for design?
What can IAs do to create better social systems?
Facebook feed story - in the middle of a presentation, he needed to demo Facebook, and had not been on the site for a few days, so had no idea what would be in the feed. This led to this presentation.
Sharing the self
"We find reasons to do things, and reasons to do things together."Why be social?
To live longer. Or at least long enough to pass on your genes.
Why share online?
Looking at - social surveillanceNotes from CHI 2008 paper
Looking for - growing the social graph
Keeping up - active or passive belonging
Public vs Private space
Privacy used to be physical. Social delay controlled the speed of information distribution.
Sharing was about entering a physical space.
Venn diagram of private / public and semi-public semi-private
Consequences
Sharing information had consequences - it always has had, it always will have.
Social networks make it easier to share information and harder to control the distribution of information.
The great preponderance of people who are designing social functionality are not aware that is what they are doing.
Enter the IA
Making connections is what we do.
We can encourage positive outcomes through persuasive design.
Designing for the [anti-]social.
Story of uploading a photo to flickr of having a beer, boss sees it on the flickr stream, comments on it. Gets back to them via cell phone.
Unintended consequences
Can be positive or negative.
Surfacing possible consequences can help people think about negative effects.
Designers need to be more outcome-aware.
Gaming a system is a way of forcing an unintended consequence.
Ambient intimacy now seen as ambient exposure.
Harmlessness
Default to harmlessness
Provide ways of reducing the risk and extent of harm, through time delays and sensible defaults.
Different people have different ways of assessing risk and judging harmfulness.
Ensure all actors in a system are harmless.
Balance of community risk, versus individual risk.
Reciprocity
One of the most powerful human behaviours.
Lurking and stalking are often undesirable, but not everyone is a contributor.
"Bartersharing" as a form of social contract mutual sharing behavior to manage privacy.
Karma is a very good thing.
Deniability
Everyone lies. Around 25% of the time.
We all know that people lie, we don't need to be told.
'Plausible deniability' lest us create alternative explanations - often involving time and location.
Granularity
Use different ways of looking at the same information to preserve privacy and usefulness.
Blurring zooming and anonymizing can all provide benefits for privacy.
Accountability
Empower users to be accountable for their data.
Let users own their data.
Make their actions visible.
Example of flickr and photos, should use the highest level of privacy of the people in the photo, not just the photo taker.
23andme - genetics personal social network.
Emergence
Allow people to apply their own meaning.
Support emergent behaviour through flexible design, open APIs and social platforms
People can be evil.
We need evil personas to establish goals and design system to keep them from achieving their goals.
Difference
We are all individuals.
People are different, in diverse ways.
Supporting difference requires empathy.
Language is loaded with semantic meaning, especially for relationships and emotions.
We encode prejudice into our systems, without even thinking.
Think globally
Showed that the average avatar in second life consumes more power than the average person in Brazil.
Summary
Think about the consequences.
Embrace the social.
Practice empathy.
Be human.
Slides will be at http://slideshare.net/rochford
miles.rochford@gmail.com
Podcast will be up at Boxes and Arrows in the fairly near future.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
What do innovative intranets look like
Intranets
Four key purposes of an intranet
Content – done a lot with this and we’ve got a lot of content
Communication channel – we’ve done ok, we’ve got a clear focus, more work to be done but it’s a good start
Collaboration – big topic now, wikis or RSS or blogs. How do we do this that doesn’t make the intranet worse in the long run? We should be talking more about this topic.
Activity – the intranet should be a place to do things and not just read.
Most of our focus has been on content and communication. This is not useful enough and we need to work with the other factors to create true ROI.
We need to shift our focus to Collaboration and activity to close the gap in the difference. Get them to something and get them to complete a task.
A good intranet should have balance across all 4 aspects.
Fiat Example
Had problems and there were cultural problems
So they created “Fast and Forward” – a program to help managers and staff change culture. Learn and build leadership skills.
For instance, they earned credits for completing managerial tasks.
Had leader boards. This was not mandatory and there were no rewards or punishment. Just ranking.
They were able to point to the plan and credit it for the turnaround.
City of Casey Example
Small team and intranet team of 1.
Intranet has a brand and every site should. The brand matches the culture and it matches their physical team.
Has a quick staff directory. Use ajax to show staff on search using type ahead. Shows phone number, status and other details. Don’t need to click search to get basic information.
Has a map of staff directory. Users add their own location. Users can click on who’s near me and get the staff near including pictures and phone numbers. “Some of the best innovations are the ones you don’t notice.”
Environment Agency (UK)
Developed personas for their site. Thorough persona (showing desk, nice touch) Engaging persona. Targeted for authors to deliver better content. But they found out that it was great for stakeholders and managers. They acknowledge that they should have used them earlier.
QBE Insurance
They created a wizard for fraudulent claims. This process historically had been ad-hoc. The developed a simple application for the collecting of this information. Wizard was tables and changed based on their answers and then it spit out a form for them to print or e-mail.
Four key purposes of an intranet
Content – done a lot with this and we’ve got a lot of content
Communication channel – we’ve done ok, we’ve got a clear focus, more work to be done but it’s a good start
Collaboration – big topic now, wikis or RSS or blogs. How do we do this that doesn’t make the intranet worse in the long run? We should be talking more about this topic.
Activity – the intranet should be a place to do things and not just read.
Most of our focus has been on content and communication. This is not useful enough and we need to work with the other factors to create true ROI.
We need to shift our focus to Collaboration and activity to close the gap in the difference. Get them to something and get them to complete a task.
A good intranet should have balance across all 4 aspects.
Fiat Example
Had problems and there were cultural problems
So they created “Fast and Forward” – a program to help managers and staff change culture. Learn and build leadership skills.
For instance, they earned credits for completing managerial tasks.
Had leader boards. This was not mandatory and there were no rewards or punishment. Just ranking.
They were able to point to the plan and credit it for the turnaround.
City of Casey Example
Small team and intranet team of 1.
Intranet has a brand and every site should. The brand matches the culture and it matches their physical team.
Has a quick staff directory. Use ajax to show staff on search using type ahead. Shows phone number, status and other details. Don’t need to click search to get basic information.
Has a map of staff directory. Users add their own location. Users can click on who’s near me and get the staff near including pictures and phone numbers. “Some of the best innovations are the ones you don’t notice.”
Environment Agency (UK)
Developed personas for their site. Thorough persona (showing desk, nice touch) Engaging persona. Targeted for authors to deliver better content. But they found out that it was great for stakeholders and managers. They acknowledge that they should have used them earlier.
QBE Insurance
They created a wizard for fraudulent claims. This process historically had been ad-hoc. The developed a simple application for the collecting of this information. Wizard was tables and changed based on their answers and then it spit out a form for them to print or e-mail.
Developing Junior Programs in UX
Developing Junior Programs in UX
Panel of:
Mags Hanley
Karen Loasby
Henning Fischer
Design your ideal junior using paper -mine looks like:
Job title: Intern
Duration: 1 year, part time during school year
Attributes: flexible, eager to learn; intelligent; diligent; humble
Skills & Experience: Customer service, exposure to topics, had a IA class, had lab test class
Education: BS if in Master's program. in progress in BS with a degree in field
Expectation: wants experience, looking to grow.
Discussion around these items. Very different concepts from mine.
BBC program
Karen Loasby
15 junior IAs since 2002
2 juniors in a team of 16, but first when team only 3.
Why?
difficult recruitment market for everyone
demand exceeds supply
BBC is special
Public Service
training is heavy investment
"Contributing to the development of the wider UK internet sector."
Benefits for BBC
Very little competition for juniors
built in loyalty
reduced salary bill
train our way
fresh ideas from academia
enthusiasm
Finding People
work experience scheme - unpaid, 2 - 3 weeks on projects
other BBC teams "we pillage other teams"
contacts
advertising on our websites
interview: short test & 1 hr interview
The role
take noes in usability testing, help organize tests, prepare wireframes, sort out daa for prototypes and tests, write up notes from workshops, taxonomy development, search and server log analysis, collecting screenshots for competitive reviews . . .
"Develop work that they can do for a long period of time, but with a short
briefing." So things we look at temps for.
Training
formal BBC training for soft skills (presentation, influencing, creative facilitation)
peer training (card-sorting, usability testing)
practical experience
Promotion and retention
1 still junior
6 promoted, 1 now senior
3 left and stayed in BBC
1 left and returned
4 left the BBC
Approach to promotion
regular promotion opportunities needed
interview for all promotions
about 1 year in, have opportunity for mid way role. So move from junior to normal.
Issues
effort/investment
career changers - coming in with advanced business skills, so the relationships etcetera - but next level is based on technical skills, not business skills.
job title - currently called junior Information Architect. They want to remove that junior level off within a month. Too quickly.
hanging onto them - 6 months in, they become attractive to the marketplace - so they start to leave.
operational work - becomes hard for them to be doing this work over time. Need to give them a chance to do more than this, so they can demonstrate that they can be a information architect.
reputation with "clients" - once you have been a junior, harder for the business to see them outside of this role.
Going forward
1 year contract, 3 months assignments
2 juniors
1 day per fortnight in training
usability / user research, wireframes, design, metadata, + one in interest area
Talk to team about running an internship / fresh grad program. I wonder if we could get a program together working with Giovanni as a year long program, based on temp style contract and no expectation of hiring at the end of that year. Might help us with any churn, identify potential people for Florence's team / Darin's team.
WTG Junior Program
Mags Hanley
Developing a graduate program for business analysts and information architects.
12 month program for 2 people.
mentoring by senior member of each team.
Writing the paper to pitch the program was easy, developing the program is hard.
Looking for someone with a degree and some kind of work.
Organization is very interested in developing junior staff, but you need practical HR help to get the program off the ground. People need to see support and progression forward.
Great motivator for senior staff. People looking for development, can see this as a great opportunity.
Need to find the time for the program, and need to time it correctly. Is this the right time for us to develop this sort of a program?
Next steps are: hire the senior IA, get the recruitment together, start the program in June.
Curriculum looks to be 1) get to understand the organization, 2) gain technical skills. Have them redesign the internal web site, have them work on client work.
Adaptive Path
Henning Fischer
Internships were very unprofessional
Summer internship: 10 weeks, 2-4 people.
Long term internship: 3-6 months 1-2 people.
Who: The interns
Areas of practice: design, IA, researchers
Hire according to your areas of expertise
Academic Background
Bring in students from programs you are familiar with, you can teach them, and they can teach you.
Personal Qualifications
People who have an arc, who are goal oriented, how can we help you do what you want to do? Look for passion.
What: The Program
Client Projects + Research & Development
Never more than one intern per project. They need that attention.
Teach by doing
Advocacy
Buddy on staff who is responsible for your care and feedback.
Treat interns like full employees
Where: Recruiting
Outreach: Targeted vs general.
Application processes: case by case vs all at once.
Used to do case by case, now doing all at once.
Closing the deal: You want what?
What clients, what kind of sexy work will they be doing with you?
Perks: we don't have a pool.
They want a lot more money than they can pay.
When: the timing
October: Send out early feelers
December: Have your program in place
January: recruit
March: hire
May: Prepare for them to come in, panic about project assignments
June - August: Work them to death
September: Follow up
A good intern program requires a year round commitment
Content Design
Content page design best practices again
Luke started at NCSA
Thought about their categories and organized it according to how it related to everything
We optimize for a hierarchy in the application… but it really is broken out into pieces on the internet(its chunked out)
Web ecosystems
Content is broken out into different types, communication, display surface, content creators, content aggregators, search… So how do we build for that?
People are searching and not just using your site hierarchy
Understanding this context….
Communication – people linking to your content and passing it along in im, email or even blogs or discussion boards
Display surfaces – mashups, facebook, places where people add content and links to content
Content creation tools – blogging(people are framing it before they get to your site)
Content aggregators – RSS, myYahoo, delicious, dig
Search engines – very demanding and what happens when people get to your page?
Break out of your page when people get there
Context, related and the content
Content
Make what shows up in the page title should be your headline (match them up)
Content should be the focus, having too much ads or other links is not good so make it your focus, cross reference to other actions related to the content is ok. If you give people what they want then they will be apt to use related links.
People don’t stay long
People don’t read the entire article and typically only scan. So keep it short.
• Favor visual hierarchy over site hierarchy
• Make it scannable
Related
Spare the site map and extra junk. You don’t need to give access to everything. But instead most content is related so give them access to the related stories or content, not the other stuff. Provide “related detours”. Give them action oriented materials. But don’t over do it. The simplest choice is the back button.
Get related calls to action noticed – pay attention where people are looking and place those links there
Best practices
• Related calls to action are ok if good content
• Limit number of choices
• Think through presentations
Context
Where you are and what you can do.
Know where they are coming directly from and modify your page to show more options based on their search.
Best practice
Utilize the minimum amount necessary to build
Luke started at NCSA
Thought about their categories and organized it according to how it related to everything
We optimize for a hierarchy in the application… but it really is broken out into pieces on the internet(its chunked out)
Web ecosystems
Content is broken out into different types, communication, display surface, content creators, content aggregators, search… So how do we build for that?
People are searching and not just using your site hierarchy
Understanding this context….
Communication – people linking to your content and passing it along in im, email or even blogs or discussion boards
Display surfaces – mashups, facebook, places where people add content and links to content
Content creation tools – blogging(people are framing it before they get to your site)
Content aggregators – RSS, myYahoo, delicious, dig
Search engines – very demanding and what happens when people get to your page?
Break out of your page when people get there
Context, related and the content
Content
Make what shows up in the page title should be your headline (match them up)
Content should be the focus, having too much ads or other links is not good so make it your focus, cross reference to other actions related to the content is ok. If you give people what they want then they will be apt to use related links.
People don’t stay long
People don’t read the entire article and typically only scan. So keep it short.
• Favor visual hierarchy over site hierarchy
• Make it scannable
Related
Spare the site map and extra junk. You don’t need to give access to everything. But instead most content is related so give them access to the related stories or content, not the other stuff. Provide “related detours”. Give them action oriented materials. But don’t over do it. The simplest choice is the back button.
Get related calls to action noticed – pay attention where people are looking and place those links there
Best practices
• Related calls to action are ok if good content
• Limit number of choices
• Think through presentations
Context
Where you are and what you can do.
Know where they are coming directly from and modify your page to show more options based on their search.
Best practice
Utilize the minimum amount necessary to build
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