Experiencing Information

Thanks to Soy Kim, a translator for O’Reilly Asia, Designing Web Navigation is now available in Korean. Here it is as seen on Yes24.com. They’ve promised to send me a copy. Will be interesting to see it in an Asian language.

Looks like libraries are putting Designing Web Navigation under the LC Classification of TK5105.888. This is roughly:

• Technology
  • Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering
    • Telecommunication, including telegraphy, telephone, radio, radar, television.

The full call number in a given library might be something like TK5105.888 .K35 2007.

LC Subject Headings from several libraries include:

• Electronic texts
• Web site development
• Web sites–Design.
• World Wide Web
• User interfaces (Computer systems)
• Internet searching

Amazon has these subjects:

• Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Web Browsers
• Books > Computers & Internet > Home Computing > Internet > Web Browsers
• Books > Computers & Internet > Graphic Design > Website Architecture & Usability

O’Reilly has it under on their site

• Web > Web Design

Libri.de has the subjects:

• User Interfaces
• Internet - Browsers
• Internet / Programmierung
• Internet - Web Site Design

Compare these to the tags on LibraryThing:

• $ Köp (1)
• Collib (1)
• computers (1)
• currently reading (1)
• design (1)
• faceted browse (1)
• information (1)
• iacanberra (1)
• information (1)
• information architecture (3)
• information seeking (1)
• labels (1)
• layout (1)
• library2 (1)
• navigation (3)
• non-fiction (2)
• organization (1)
• rias (1)
• rich web applications (1)
• search (1)
• tagging (1)
• to catalogue (1)
• to read (1)
• usability (2)
• user research (1)
• ux (2)
• visual design (1)
• web (2)
• web design

What does this tell us? Not 100% sure. Some of the controlled subject headings are off, like “Electronic texts” from LCSH and “Web browsers” from Amazon. So it’s hard to make a case that those are better access points.

The tags seem better to me, but perhaps too numerous. (Of course, I tagged the heck out of Designing Web Navigation on LibraryThing, so I’m contradicting myself). And except for a few personal tags, I actually find they are more descriptive of the book. There is information on tagging and facetted browse interfaces in the book, and that’s hard to show in most library subject headings.

So from this sample, the tags win out in for me.

So far, everyone is commenting on the appearance of DWN: the layout, the font, the images, the scannability, etc. Guess the content reviews come later.

But I did get some feedback on the content recently. In particular, some folks from the University College of London Interaction Centre wrote to O’Reilly.

First, here’s what I wrote in DWN:
“The University College of London Interaction Centre hosts a research project that explores the possibility of making all online text interactive—right down to the individual words. Instead of hypertext, the researchers refer to this as Hyperwords. The basic idea is that when a word is clicked, an option menu appears. You can then conduct a search, link to related documents, define the term, translate it, and so on. As they put it, the goal is to put an ‘end to the tyranny of links.’ This would also mean an end to navigation design.”

And they wrote in an email:
“We are very happy to be included in this book, but Hyperwords in no way tries to end navigation design.

Quite the contrary.

Information management and the work of knowledge workers is to continually refine information and re-present it as usefully as possible. Links are fantastic. But they are even more powerful when augmented by other modes of navigation and information work.”

Not sure how I could have misinterpreted putting an “end to the tyranny of links,” but it looks like I did. I mean, how can links be both a tyranny and fantastic at the same time? I guess it’s a fantastic tyranny.

But, enough quibbling with semantics. The example in the book is part of a hypothetical exploration of what navigation is. To show this, I simply wanted to present other models of getting from one piece of information to another, and Hyperwords inspired a whole new way to do that. And, I mention that web navigation is really a system of multiple means of getting around a body of information. So, I think we’re on the same page there.

Thanks for your comment, UCLIC. I’ll be sure to address this correctly in the future.

So, the first review of DWN has come in on Amazon: 5 stars! Not a bad way to start off the Amazon.com listing for customer reviews of the book. I know I’m often very influenced by the first rating I see on Amazon.

It’s a short review and doesn’t really go into much depth or detail. The reviewer seems to like the layout and organization of the book. I’m glad she likes the fact that I cite others, something that wasn’t easy to juggle.

She also likes the abundance of screenshots, which was quite a lot of work–more than I planned for. I spent hours looking for appropriate examples on the web. And I didn’t want to keep using the same sites, so I ran out of ideas sometimes. Then, once you find a good example there are all kinds of other considerations, like how wide the page should be, what should be shown, and what portion of the screen should be used. And the images had to named and tracked properly for production. For some chapters, I spent as much time getting the screenshots together as writing the text. That doesn’t really show through, however, when you’re just flipping pages quickly, so it’s good to hear that someone appreciates the results of that work.

The reviewer cautions that the book isn’t for programmers. I mention this quite clearly in the preface as well. My first editor warned me that people might think it’s a book for developers. With a title like Designing Web Navigation I can’t imagine why. Coding a web page isn’t Design, now is it? How did it ever come to be that “web design” got equated with programming?

Anyway, thanks for to Ms Prosser for her favorable review on Amazon.com

Over at atomiq, Gene has some interesting thoughts about why tagging isn’t stuck. I agree with him, and commented as such on his blog. Social bookmarking might be stuck, but tagging is just taking off, if you ask me. We’re really just starting to understand the potential of tagging. As long as sites like LibraryThing can keep coming up with cool features like the tag mirror, it’s got a bright future.

At the same time, let’s also keep in mind that tagging is really just more metadata. Where it comes from and why it’s there is different than owner-applied metadata or even technically generated metadata, but it’s still just metadata. In some cases, like on flickr, technorati, or LibraryThing, it wildly abundant metadata. And free. That’s what’s really different. If we can figure out how to really leverage those aspects, tagging may indeed become a disruptive technology.

Gene’s got a lot to say about the topic–so much so that he’s writing a book on the subject. Can’t wait for that one. I was fortunate to have Gene read and comment on an early draft of Chapter 12 of Designing Web Navigation, which is about tagging. Thanks, Gene.

Smashing magazine is giving away copies of its recommended design reading list. To enter, post your answer to ‘What is the best thing to start a perfect day with?’ at the bottom of the page, along with the book you would like.

#38 looks familiar. Seems about 4 out of the 1000+ entrants would like to have it.

Looks like DWN is now available on Amazon.com. Also seems to be ready to ship on Amazon.co.uk, but not on Amazon.de. It usually takes longer to make it over to the Continent.

Anyway, rush out not to purchase your copies before they all sell out! (Just kidding - you only need to buy one copy :-).

So, after one year and three months of working and waiting, my book finally arrived on my doorstep this morning. What a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t expecting it until later. But there it was in hard copy. Relieved, proud, happy–I’m not quite sure how to feel about it. And I’m not sure what to expect next.

Thanks to everyone who helped with the book.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I received an author advanced copy. It’s still not available on Amazon as of August 19. O’Reilly has a told me that is should be available for to buy at the end of August 2007–just a few weeks off.