Design de Navegação Web – DWN in Portuguese

Got an unexpected package this morning: a copy of Design de Navegação Web, the Portuguese translation of Designing Web Navigation.

Emotions and Design – Mood Maps

via Steve Baty, I came across a post by Will Evans called Design Ethnography & Mood Maps. He touches on two of my favorite topics at the moment: ethnography and emotions in design. In particular, Will introduces the concepts of Mood Maps to record user emotions. In a nutshell, mood maps are about mapping the emotional states people have to phases of a process.

This is similar to what I recommend in what I call the Information Search Experience (ISX), which I presented at the IA Summit in Austin TX in 2004. See my presentation: Information Search Experience: Emotions in Information Seeking. Of course, I was focused on information seeking in my model, but the principle is the similar: uncover the different states of emotions people have and map them back to phases of a given process. Here are two publications where I also present this idea:

• “I’m Feeling Lucky: The Role of Emotions in Seeking Information on the Web,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(6), 813-818 (April 2006).
• “Feeling Lucky? Emotions and Information Seeking,” interactions, v. XI.5 (September-October 2004).

I also present this very briefly in Designing Web Navigation. Here’s the excerpt from the end of Chapter 2:

Emotions in Information Seeking
Information seeking on the web, in particular, is an emotional experience. Unfortunately, confusion and uncertainty tend to dominate feelings of enthusiasm and optimism. For many web surfers, the joy of discovery and pride of learning can be rare feelings against a backdrop of frustration and a sense of being overwhelmed.
When discussing the emotions users have while finding information on the web, it is critical to look at common situations and states users are in. Here is where patterns in basic human information-seeking behaviors give rise to a framework for both evaluating and designing web-based search and navigation systems.

Information Search Process
A holistic approach to explaining the user’s experience in information seeking, the Information Search Process (ISP) is a model of searching for information with a difference: it takes emotions into account. Developed by Carol Kuhlthau, a professor at Rutgers University, the ISP has six stages:

• Initiation – The user becomes conscious of a gap in knowledge. Feelings of uncertainty and apprehension are common, and the main task is to recognize a need for information.
• Selection – Uncertainty often gives way to feelings of optimism and a readiness to begin searching. The task is to identify and select the topic to be investigated. Thoughts are forward-looking and attempt to predict an outcome.
• Exploration – Feelings of uncertainty, confusion, and doubt return. A general inability to precisely express an information need commonly results in an awkward interaction with the search system.
• Formulation – Rising confidence and decreasing uncertainty mark a turning point in the process. Forming a focus becomes the chief task as thoughts become clearer.
• Collection – Interaction with the information system is most effective and efficient. Decisions about the scope and focus of the topic have been made and a sense of direction sets in. Confidence continues to increase.
• Presentation – The goal now is to complete the search and fulfill the information need. A sense of relief is common, as well as satisfaction or dissatisfaction (in the case of a negative outcome). Thoughts center on synthesizing and internalizing what was learned.

Kuhlthau also observed a “dip” in confidence often seen after a seeker began looking for information and started to encounter overwhelming, perhaps conflicting information. This contradicts the previous assumption that confidence steadily increases as more information is found. A seeker “in the dip” can experience uncertainty, confusion, and even anxiety until a focus is formed or a search is broken off.

The existence of that dip suggests a gap between users’ natural information use and information system design. Acquiring more information in initial stages (particularly in Exploration) increases rather than decreases uncertainty. In terms of emotions, searching for information is a discontinuous endeavor with highs and low of confidence and certainty.

Tailoring the ISP
In an attempt to avoid the dip, you can use Kuhlthau’s theoretical model as the framework for navigation design, tailoring an ISP to reflect the actions, thoughts, and feelings for your site visitors. The steps are:

1. Segment users and create profiles. An ISP only applies to a particular target group.
2. Identify the information seeking stages and user goals for each. The established phases will serve as a starting point, but must be adapted.
3. Record the typical feelings, thoughts, and actions at each stage.
4. Map stakeholder goals to each stage. What is your organization trying to achieve and how does it fit in with the natural navigation process of users?
5. Derive features and requirements for the site that map to each phase in the seeking process

This is best summarized in a large table. The columns are labeled Actions, Thoughts, Feelings, Features, and Business Goals. The rows are the stages in your tailored ISP.

20 User Experience Books You Should Own

UX By Design has a list of 20 UX books they feel every designer should own. See their post 20 User Experience Books You Should Own.

Designing Web Navigation is #4 on the list. I’m not sure if this is a ranked list or not, but it’s still nice to appear towards the top. AndI’m in good company–places 1-3 rightfully go to:

1. Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World, by Peter Merholz
2. Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning, by Dan Brown
3. Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs (Interactive Technologies), by Hugh Beyer

Breaking The Rules of Web Design

via The Hot Strudel…

Interesting article over at Web Designer Depot called “10 Web Design Rules You Can Break.” The examples are quite interesting and inspiring. Horizontal scrolling and mystery meat navigation? Why not!

I disagree with the fundamental premise of the article though: ALL so-called design rules can be broken–not just these 10. This is a point I try to make in Designing Web Navigation.

From the preface of my book:

Web navigation design is a craft. You must employ creative problem solving skills to arrive at a practical solution by considering and examining different possibilities. Intuition plays as much as a role as skill, experience, and science. Rarely is there a single, optimal solution. As with any design practice, navigation design is about balance, tradeoffs, and exploring alternatives. For this reason, you won’t find all the answers in this book. Instead, I offer a systematic approach to the problems of navigation design. Navigation design is really about asking the right questions at the right time.

If design were ever about following rules, you could conceivably create an algorithm that generates a web design. That’s not how it works. You have to use your brain.

Also, the Web Designer Depot article provides a lot of examples, but doesn’t qualify them as successful or not. That’s the real measure of a good design, in my opinion: does it help reach the ultimate goals of the site? It’s the only “rule” you shouldn’t break.

The Myth of the Compromised Need?

Jeppe Nicolaisen, from the Royal School of Library and Information Science, has an interesting forthcoming article in JASIST:

Nicolaisen, J. (in press). Compromised need and the label effect: An examination of claims and evidence Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 1-6 DOI: 10.1002/asi.21129

In a nutshell, he puts the empirical-ness of Taylor’s notion of the “compromised need” in doubt. To quickly review, according to Taylor an information need progresses through four levels when a seeker is looking for information:

• Visceral need – This is the actual, but unexpressed need for information
• Conscious need – The recognized need at a cognitive level
• Formalized need – A formal statement of the need
• Compromised need – This is the question as presented to the information system or intermediary. It called the compromised need because the inquirer must adapt the question to accommodate the available resources. This has also been called the label effect, because it has been assumed that seekers frequently fail to specify their true information needs, i.e., they use the wrong labels.

Taylor’s theory has been the inspiration for many user-centered studies in information retrieval and library science for the past three decades. It was even (part of ) the basis in my Information Search Experience model I presented at the IA Summit in 2004 in Austin. See my presentation: Information Search Experience: Emotions in Information Seeking.

But Nicolaisen finds problem after problem with studies that supposedly support the notion of the “compromised need” empirically. He is particularly critical of some works by Ingwersen, pointing out incorrect citations and interpretation of other studies. Yikes.

Nicolaisen concludes:

We have examined available studies of the compromised need / the label effect and have compared claims against evidence. The aim was to establish whether the compromised need / the label effect is a frequently occurring phenomenon or not. We found that the studies that reportedly had verified the phenomenon (Ingwersen & Kaae, [1980]; Ingwersen, [1982]; Belkin et al., [1982]; Belkin, [1984]; Nordlie, [1999]) all suffer from technical problems that put the claim of verification in doubt. Two other studies (Lynch, [1978]; Hauptman, [1987]) that report low percentages of questions changing from the initial query during large-scale studies of user-librarian negotiations might indicate that users are quite often asking for precisely what they want. Although it is difficult to imagine that so many users would have accepted leaving with unanswered information needs, the fact that the librarians did not conduct in-depth interviews, and therefore may have failed to discover users’ real information needs, preclude us from making definite conclusions. However, what we can conclude is that the compromised need / the label effect is not the empirical fact that it has otherwise been claimed to be.

Oops.

Experience Strategy @ Johnny Holland

I previously reviewed Subject To Change on this blog. In reviewing the book with the UX book club, Steve Baty offers a good summary of experience stragtegy in a recent article on Johnny Holland.

Here’s Steve’s definition:

An experience strategy is that collection of activities that an organization chooses to undertake to deliver a series of (positive, exceptional) interactions which, when taken together, constitute an (product or service) offering that is superior in some meaningful, hard-to-replicate way; that is unique, distinct & distinguishable from that available from a competitor.

Check out Steve’s article for a play-by-play blow of this all-important concept.

Designing Web Navigation – In Chinese!

Just after I got the Japanese edition of my book, I learned that it’s also available in Chinese.

Apparently it’s been out since March 2009, but I didn’t even know they were working on a translation of it. This is good news, though, so I’m not going to complain.

The IA China group has set up a topic page for the book as well: http://www.iachina.org/tiki-index.php?page=designwebnavigation

Designing Web Navigation in Japanese

The Japanese version of Designing Web Navigation is out. Here are some photos on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/securecat/3578594476/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kazuhito/3571197567/

Thanks to everyone who made that possible!

C-Inspector: Task-Based Category Testing

Steffen Schilb is at it again. First came CardSort. Now he’s developed another interesting tool to test your information architecture called C-Inspector:

“C–Inspector is a web–based application that helps you to test the information architecture of your website. By analyzing both quantitative and qualitative data collected through the remote test, you can gain insight into the users’ mental models and identify possible issues with labelling or grouping.”

I’ve not tried the tool myself yet, but it looks promising. The task-based approach would appear to give rich feedback on your IA. This isn’t new, though–the guys over at Optimal Usability also just recently launched TreeJack, which I got to see at the IA Summit in Memphis. It also takes a task-based approach.

Congratulations, Steffen.

Fast Company on Info Viz

Fast Company has an interesting piece on information visualization: Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design? Author Michael Cannell is placing big bets on the future of info viz:

Designers have historically excelled at finding insightful ways of looking at complex problems. Visualization will likely play a prominent role as design evolves beyond the consumer economy (selling $2,000 poufs and other high-end furnishings) and helps create efficient new forms of buildings, food distribution and transportation.

He also mentions Edward Tufte:

You might think of visualization as the antithesis of Power Point, which sometimes seems to make us dumber. Six years ago, Edward Tufte, a Big Thinker in the field of information graphics, issued a 28-page pamphlet that dumped on Power Point as “a faux analysis” that “turns everything into a sales pitch.” Visualization does the opposite: it reflects the complexity of the world in simple terms. It is a window onto the world, in all its digital complexity. Though of course data can be skewed in deceitful and insidious ways.

I quite like that last bit. It reminds us that information visualization isn’t about reducing complexity, but embracing it and devising ways to make the complex clear.

There are some interesting examples of information visualization in the article, reflecting a rather broad definition of the field. In particular, the article links to a YouTube video of the introduction of a “word cloud” on CNN.

I’m a big fan of info viz in general and feel there is a wealth of potential there we’re just starting to realize. In Designing Web Navigation I briefly touch on the subject, but I warn that most info viz mechanisms aren’t mainstream yet–use them with caution. I wrote:

Visualization mechanisms tend to have limited use and should be reserved for special situations. General web users may not be accustomed to them. But, as research in information visualization mechanisms continues, their application may become more widespread.

I think that’s still true. You don’t want to have info viz be you’re ONLY navigation possibility on your site or application–at least not at the moment. But leveraging them as supplements to traditional browse and search options can bring value to users. And in doing so, info viz may become more and more common and understood.

Journal of Information Architecture, Issue 1, Volume 1

The first issue of the Journal of Information Architecture (JofIA) has finally arrived. I contributed a piece on uncertainty. Here’s the table of contents:

• Dorte Madsen
  Editorial: Shall We Dance?
  pp. 1-5
• Gianluca Brugnoli
  Connecting the Dots of User Experience
  pp. 6-15
• Helena Francke
  Towards an Architectural Document Analysis
  pp. 16-36
• Andrew Hinton
  The Machineries of Context
  pp. 37-47
• James Kalbach
  On Uncertainty in Information Architecture
  pp. 48-55

It was a long time coming and a lot of people put a ton of work into the launch of the journal. Congratulations to everyone involved.

Auftritt im Fools Garden – Sa. 2.5.

Hallo an alle, die in Hamburg sind.

Meine Band–Helmut and the Lampshades–wird morgen am Samstag den 2.5. mit unserem neuen Programm im Fools Garden auftreten.

-> Spoken-Word: Jazz-Arrangements zu den Erzählungen, so wie Songs von Neil Young und eigene Stücke.

Mehr Details auf unserer Website: http://lampshadejazz.wordpress.com/

European Commission: Design as a driver of user-centred innovation

Jan over at The Hot Strudel pointed this out. Thanks, Jan.

As a term and concept in business, “design thinking” has been around for a while. See for instance Victor Lombardi’s collection of design thinking-related materials. In the Spring of 2008, the Harvard Business Review finally picked up on the topic. Tim Brown wrote an excellent article simply entitled “Design Thinking”. He writes:

“Historically, design has been treated as a downstream step in the development process—the point where designers, who have played no earlier role in the substantive work of innovation, come along and put a beautiful wrapper around the idea. To be sure, this approach has stimulated market growth in many areas by making new products and technologies aesthetically attractive and therefore more desirable to consumers or by enhancing brand perception through smart, evocative advertising and communication strategies. During the latter half of the twentieth century design became an increasingly valuable competitive asset in, for example, the consumer electronics, automotive, and consumer packaged goods industries. But in most others it remained a late-stage add-on.

Now, however, rather than asking designers to make an already developed idea more attractive to consumers, companies are asking them to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires. The former role is tactical, and results in limited value creation; the latter is strategic, and leads to dramatic new forms of value.

Moreover, as economies in the developed world shift from industrial manufacturing to knowledge work and service delivery, innovation’s terrain is expanding. Its objectives are no longer just physical products; they are new sorts of processes, services, IT-powered interactions, entertainments, and ways of communicating and collaborating—exactly the kinds of human-centered activities in which design thinking can make a decisive difference.”

Seems someone in the European Commission might have read Tim’s HBR article, or at least the literature around the connection between design and innovation. The EC is currently working on a document called “Design as a driver of user-centred innovation,” which provides an analysis of the rationale for making design an integral part of European innovation policy.

See: http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/newsroom/cf/itemlongdetail.cfm?item_id=3054〈=en

“The results are compelling: companies that invest in design tend to be more innovative, more profitable and grow faster than those who do not. At a macro-economic level, there is a strong positive correlation between the use of design and national competitiveness.

Although often associated with aesthetics and the ‘looks’ of products only, the application of design is in reality much broader. User needs, aspirations and abilities are the starting point and focus of design activities. With a potential to integrate for example environmental, safety and accessibility considerations — in addition to economic — into products, services and systems, design is an area which deserves public attention.

Design as a driver and enabler of innovation complements more traditional innovation activities such as research. In the current economic climate, where resources for innovation are scarce, design and other non-technological innovation drivers, such as organisational development, employee-involvement and branding, become particularly relevant. They often are less capital intensive and have shorter pay-back periods than for example technological research, but still have the potential to drive competitiveness.

Potential barriers exist to better use of design for innovation in Europe. Design as a tool for innovation has developed rapidly in recent years, resulting notably in concepts such as strategic design, design management and design thinking. Innovation policy and support, as well as education systems, have not yet caught up with these developments. Companies that lack experience of design — particularly SMEs, low-tech companies and companies not located in big cities where design businesses tend to concentrate — often do not know where to turn for professional help in the area of design. Design businesses are generally very small, a factor affecting their marketing and influencing powers.”

It’s good to see design and design thinking being taken seriously by large, influential organizations like the EC.

3D Tag Clouds

The 3D tag cloud isn’t new, but I came across one in real life on a Sydney tours site. WordPress has been offering a 3D tag cloud for a while now, developed by Roy Tanck.

I’m not a huge fan of tag clouds as a navigation mechanism in general. They’ll probably prove to be a fad and will date the current generation of web sites. Sure, tag cloud provide a certain zeitgeist-effect and give a quick overivew. But as a navigation mechanism, tag clouds are pretty lousy.

The 3D tag cloud was fun to play with, but I don’t think it will revolutionize tag navigation in any way.

Commercial Ethnography – My Presentation at Walden U.

Tricia Ryan, an instructional designer at Laureate Higher Education Group, Inc. where she develops courses for Walden University, picked up my Commercial Ethnography presentation from the Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam and used it for a class. Here’s the online synched slideshow of my presentation.

Those of you who know me will recognize that that’s not my voice. Someone at Walden U. wrote and spoke the text in the video above. Kinda weird to see my slides and have someone else talk to them. But, whatever–I’m just happy someone else is interested in the subject.