Information Architecture Readings

I have been having so much fun with these readings! First of all, they are chunked and easy to read (as Jake mentioned to me the other night in class). But how I have been having fun is by going to the web pages the authors cite right while I am reading (instead of telling myself I've got to check this out later). When I got to chapter 4 about the Gustavus home page, and the authors say, "You can't help but notice the site's colors (you'll have to take our word for it)"; that's when I decided not to take their "word" but to go to the site right away. It is quite attractive, and interesting to navigate see for yourself! I was also amazed at del.icio.us; this must be that the site that Elizabeth mentioned earlier in the semester? At any rate, I am in awe of it! I think it would be a great tool to show my students for them to collect sites, especially for their webography project we have coming up. But does anyone know how big the risk, if any, for losing your collected sites and information on del.icio.us? Does this kind of thing happen often? Lastly, here is a blog that seemed interesting for us based off or our readings; it is part of the Instone's site mentioned on page 48 for his Navigation Stress Test. I'm sure many of you either already looked at these links, or would be looking at them. I hope I didn't butt in on the moderators this week, but I was just so excited and I'm sure they will have much more to say and show than what I am doing! I just thought I'd throw up a few links to make it quicker and easier for you some of you to see these. But I really want to know about the reliability of del.icio.us, so if anyone knows anything, please respond!

Things I should have thought of earlier...

I was just thinking about Gregory's article and Neilsen's ugly webpages, and wondering why what has been appropriate for print is not appropriate for the web, and I think it's about audience. I don't think anyone has ever enjoyed reading long, wordy paragraphs with no section breaks or headers, but I think that print traditionally has had a smaller audience that has endured these painful things because they thought they had no choice. Enter the web, and a much wider audience, many of whom may read very little in the way of books or articles that are not for entertainment purposes (however difficult that may be to imagine, there are more people out there like this than there are of us). These people do not have the tolerance for wordiness and find the ordinarily accepted style of nonfiction writing soporific--it results in the MEGO effect (My Eyes Glaze Over). In writing you must accomodate the lowest common denominator (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way), so we must now take into account not just the understanding of our college-educated audience who reads crap because that's what they're used to, but to the masses who want their information written well, with concision and clarity.
It's interesting that it is for writing to a broader audience that we must hone our writing skills more than to our usual select audience. As most of us have learned, it is usually easier to write a longer paper than to say the same thing in just 1 or 2 pages.

Just a late thought I thought I'd put out there.

NIU & Music Piracy

Hello, all!

Related to our discussion last week, I heard on NPR today that 400 some students at 18 or so colleges around the country are going to be sued for pirating music. That is, if they don't take the plea deal being offered to them. Guess one of the colleges...yup, some NIU student is in trouble for illegally downloading music. I attempted to find a link to an article, but wasn't able to yet. Kind of freaky considering our presentation. What do you think?

Writing for the Web vs Print: Think of the User

Reading these articles made me have flashbacks to working for the American Dental Assn and going through the major redesign process back in 2002ish (nightmare -- so many departments to accommodate) and then flashback even farther to 1999 and working as an assitant editor for the American Med Assn Web site (we were still trying to figure out what this Internet business was all about -- but they had a site).

I think Gregory's statement about the writer should "be guided by their audience's needs and their communicative purpose" is a good rule to follow. I used to hear constantly at one place -- design the page so the main content is "above the fold" of the screen then people will be more inclined to read, ie, write fewer words, be more concise. Also, put the info in manageable chunks -- white space is good, no lengthy paragraphs like in print medium.

But, ultimately, it all depends on the users and in corporate context depending on company and purpose. For consumers, yes, writing shorter passages might be best -- keeps the reader focused and doesn't overwhelm them with too much info on a page. Yet, if you go to a medical journal Web site to access a peer-reviewed journal, the expectation of the reader (primarily healthcare providers) is to read a lengthy text with possibly long paragraphs online and scroll down (still you do try to break the paragraphs up some even the hated 1 sentence paragraph was promoted). Sure, sites have designed in various ways to make navigation more accommodating, but it depends on the needs of the user. The writing for Web then depends on the purpose and users -- same as in print.

When I sat behind a 2-way mirror at a focus group to watch users try to navigate through a site, following various tasks, it once again became clear that writing for the Web and writing in print has a similar goal -- consider the audience and the purpose.

The medium does need to be considered but in respect to writing, many of the same rules do apply.

Miscellaneous thoughts

Nothing from this week's readings jumped out as controversial, nor did I feel my normal "technology is the enemy" attitude welling up inside. Yet somehow, I have managed a few thoughts on both readings.

I was a bit disappointed with the Gregory article. I was hoping that more attention would be given to e-literature (short stories, novellas, etc.). Instead I felt the "guidelines" applied only to those "traditional" texts that naturally lent themselves to publishing on the web (i.e. pamphlets, brochures, marketing materials, etc.). I'm confident that if I read these guidelines to my 8th graders, at least half of them would give me a resounding "Duh" or "No kidding."

The Nielsen article made me wonder about the chicken or the egg. Do "Web pages have to employ scannable text" because people scan web sites, or do people scan web texts because they (for the most part) have always been scannable? The Internet thrives in no small part because it provides quick access to a world of information, and I would imagine that the first creators of websites considered this strongly as they developed site structure. Getting to a site in one second and then needing one hour to get your information doesn't make much sense. Did we need a study to prove this?

See you tomorrow,

Jake

Can you scan this?

In fact, you won't need to! (It'll be short). The Morkes and Nielsen article fits well with my web-reading practices, at least tonight. I jumped right to their short summary, but then I went back to the full article out of guilt. While reading the full article, however, I read mostly topic sentences, and scanned the rest! (How easily I'm persuaded by test results!) I did, however, bookmark the page for when I have "more time."


My biggest dissapointment, unlike some of our other posters, is that while I've been to Nebraska dozens of times, I've not been to one of its top six destinations! My mom, born and raised in NE, hasn't either! The good news is that I called her about this, and we now have a plan!

Creative user interfaces

I’m not sure how pertinent to our discussion this is—but it is undeniably the coolest navigational scheme I’ve ever seen or dreamed of. Etsy is kind of an online craft store where people can buy and sell things to each other; on the surface it sounds a lot like eBay, I suppose. But this site is all crafted around the user experience and is very community oriented—I actually kind felt like I was spying as I skimmed their forum boards.

The home page may look much like any other e-commerce site at first glance, but take a look at the options at the top of the left-hand menu column, and try the one called “Colors.” There is a help button if you can’t figure it out, but I found it to be quite user friendly, and brilliantly executed (it worked flawlessly on my dial-up connection at home)—not to mention that it’s fun to play with. I’m not sure of its ultimate practicality without a few more filter options (such as, only bring up jewelry, or accent furniture, etc.), but I think that with the creative community they’ve so carefully fostered, they’ve found a way to cater to their specific audience in an elegant and user friendly way. (There are 2 other alternate navigational paths, Time Machine & Time Machine 2, but I couldn't use them from my slow connection. I have little doubt that they are equally cool.)

In such a user-focused environment, I did find it rather jarring to see this in their FAQ section:

"Can I use HTML formatting in my Bio?
We do not allow any user-created HTML formatting anywhere on the site. We have designed Etsy to provide a consistent visual experience and this would interrupt that."

Interesting… and I bet people who are becoming more used to the Web 2.0 experience of customizing their spaces (like MySpace.com) were a bit frustrated with that bit. Other than this bit, which reflects, I’m sure, the frustration of designers trying to cope with Web 2.0, I think this site’s innovative approach should be an inspiration to us as web experience designers to think outside the box and try to give our users another way of accessing our information. (Sorry about the cliché!)