The Missing Audience

To my dismay, the authors seem to focus more heavily on individuals who build websites in collaboration with a group of specialists. Per our last class discussion, many people acknowledged that they had been the sole creators of websites while working for companies. The fact that Morville and Rosenfeld fail to address all the potential members of their audience, including the sole creator of a website is a little disconcerting. With the exception of a few people, most of the members of this class acknowledge that they are novice when it comes to building websites. It would be nice to read about ways in which the sole web developer could combine all the skills in chapters six through ten to create viable websites without the assistance of others.

By,
I feel lefted out!

Not on IA topic, but interesting.

Hi, everyone. Long time no blog. Thought I'd share.
My book review was on cyberactivism and how the internet can be used as a tool for political action. It seems that politicians are paying attention to that message. I ran across this
article and thought people would be interested to know that Myspace has gone political. It seems the candidates are using this networking resource to get the word out, organize, and plead for support. And we all thought Myspace was just for fun.

Sorry...I'm using Safari web browser and it won't let me hyperlink the URL...even with keyboard shortcuts. So here's the full address: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129987-c,currentevents/article.html

reading for this week's presentation

Sorry about the tardiness, but I just discovered this today. It's a reading - a tutorial - on information architecture. Just follow the recipe and you're there. Enjoy.

http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1.html

Personalization and ADD

I've come to realize something about myself and, quite frankly, everyone else over the past several years. We ALL fall somewhere along the wide spectrum of Attention Deficit Disorder. While I've been able to fight through most of my ADD tendencies to lead a relatively productive life on a day-to-day basis, I find it affects me most when using the Internet. As I read about personalization in Chapter 6 of IA, it occurred to me that this particular web design strategy has exacerbated the problem.

It starts out simply enough. I make an online purchase, and as I am checking out, the site kindly informs me of other products which might be of interest to me ("Others who have purchased Item X have also purchased Item Y"). While I rarely go the way of the lemming, I do occasionally find myself clicking on the picture "to learn more," even if I don't make any additional purchases.

The next time I visit the site, it's ready for me. It reminds of what I've previously purchased and has new recommendations at the ready. What these sites fail to recognize is that I'm a buyer, not a shopper. I purchase with purpose. I already know what I want.

I understand these companies are trying to maximize profits under the guise of making my online shopping experience more pleasant and convenient; I'm even willing to tolerate the effort. All I ask is that they design the personalization so that if I have not used any of the "suggestions" in say, five visits, the site is intuitive enough to leave me alone. Now, if my ADD kicks in and/or I'm dumb enough to click on the bait, then shame on me. They get five more cracks at it.

Thanks, I feel better.

Jake

A little of this, a little of that

I find myself somewhat frustrated by the book assuming that we’re going to be working on these mammoth web sites. I understand that they have to assume the most difficult possible scenarios, but it would be nice if there were tips for figuring out which bits should apply to smaller sites. I liked all the attention paid to redesign in chapter 10, but again, I wish I had read all this before I had to submit my proposal. I now see a lot of other things I could have addressed, but couldn’t figure out how to frame or articulate.

In any case, I wanted to share some resources I found that I hope you might find useful in designing your sites. The book mentioned content management systems pretty briefly, without really explaining them—I’m not saying that I’m the right person to do that, but I think they are worth looking into. The person who presently runs the site I’m redesigning uses one, while the webmaster (please hear that word dripping with sarcasm) who designed the much larger site I presently maintain did not use a CMS. When I saw how much the CSM helped to organize and simplify the maintenance of a site, I couldn’t believe that I was doing it the hard way. It is… well, it’s really hard to describe. I found an open source (read: free) CMS that anyone can download and use. If you are curious, check out Joomla and read more about what it can do. This is something that may not be worthwhile for little sites (under 20 pages), but if you anticipate a lot of growth, it might be worth it to use this as a foundation to make it easier on your successors.

I also found some good sources for pixel fonts. Fonts like Verdana and Georgia were actually created to be viewed on-screen (as opposed to printed), but even they tend to look pretty crummy at less than 10px. Sometimes you really need to have tiny print. At least when you use a font specifically designed to be used at these sizes, you're doing your best to ensure legibility. Check these out:

Silkscreen

Sevenet

Subatomic Screen

Also check out Fonts by Cal Henderson and Grixel for lots more options.

Big sites vs. small sites

We’ve been reading about “designing large-scale web sites”. Some of us might like to think of our class sites as “large-scale”, but we probably won’t have wizards, configurators, personalization, customization, search boxes, much – if any – metadata, prepare blueprints or wireframes, search-log analysis, clicklogs, etc. We will have labels, content, context, navigation systems (global and local), some metadata, some user analysis, some user testing – small doses of everything. We’ll all be “committees of one”. We’ll have to become part of a large organization or become consultants to use the other stuff. Personally, I’ll probably never use the “large-site” stuff, but plan to follow – as best I can – the schedule along with the book chapters for my class website plan. Yet, I think it might be fun to be involved in a group project like the ones in our book. And I now have some suggestions for some of the sites I use all the time, such as my mortgage company, Freedom Mortgage. To access an account, you log in to www.myloancare.com. You get a “runtime error” screen which morphs into (for us account holders) a userid and password screen. If you log in to their home site http://mortgages.fhmc.com, you can’t get to your account. My bank http://www.tcfbank.com has “personal banking” and “online banking” links– which one? Answer: "online banking". If I contact them, will I be “tilting at windmills”? Do I have time? Ah, I feel better now.

Architecture and Usability

I found IA to be very interesting. Just to know that I could officially print "Information Architect" on a business card after learning and doing more of this Web work is pretty appealing!

I was suprised to see the similarities between the information structure on the Web and the numerous organizational systems we are all already using to cope in society, e.g., books cataloged in libraries and food items arranged in grocery stores. Once again, my initial reaction to Web creation is altered. Just as we discussed that "Writing for the Web and Writing for print" are not so different after all, this week I declare that well-founded principles of good organization with tangible objects can carry over to organizing text, graphics, and images in cyberspace.

On a different but related note, I had a usability testing project this semester and my partner and I chose to test NIU's Web site. In every case, users searched for the same two tasks in different ways. Seems like some social influences can even affect Web searches!