14 Dec 2006 0602H

Some information architecture tidbits

Okay, okay. . . some IA tidbits here to get us back on track.

Last week, just like I learned from Steve Krug, I did some usability testing with eight users who matched the description of the personas we’re using for our site. I used a Logitech webcam, my corporate issued laptop, and some software I downloaded off the internet, and it worked out really well. The big learning for me is that when you’re doing high fidelity comp-wireframe hybrids in a rich media environment is that you can’t really test the interaction design unless all the elements are there, so the utility for that is relatively limited. It’s kinda like paper prototyping without the dry erase markers.

I’ve learned Rosenfeld’s Polar Bear 3 is out. I’ll get to it after I’m done with the other 12-15 books I have backlogged. I second his approval of Dan Brown’s excellent Communicating Design. About 11 years ago I picked up a book called Creating Killer Web Sites by David Siegel, which is how I learned enough to get into this business, and I’d say Brown’s book is at least as important to me in terms of deliverable construction.

I don’t have much to say about the Death of Information Architecture or Information Architecture 3.0, whose long shadows haven’t touched the deep canyons where I live. There is an information architecture and design ecology that we work in and we all just have to get along, learn what we can, create a body of knowledge, canonize it, and go through all the other pains of institutionalization. I can’t say I’m a pure, MLIS-trained IA, because I’m not, although I did some indexing and library work in grad school, and I don’t salivate over the idea of constructing controlled vocabs, or faceted classifications, and all that taxonomic construction, because that’s not where I come from. I’m just trying to scrabble for a foothold on the slippery slope of the interdiscipline.

I just picked up this article by way of LukeW which talks about good enough being, well, good enough when it comes to simplicity. Here’s a quote from that article:

Above all, they subjected their work to the demanding standards of Intuit’s usability lab, run by Kaaren Hanson. To get a product by her, users must be able, 90% of the time, to accomplish the tasks deemed most critical. It’s a draconian standard. But “if our goal was to make it ‘as easy as we can,’ ” Hanson says, “we wouldn’t be as successful as if we had set a concrete number.”

The Simple Start team thought they had nailed the user-interface problem after their third iteration of the product got rave reviews for its look and feel. But task completion results from the lab were dismal. The launch was delayed for months while the team reengineered the tools until they measured up.

The additional time was worth it. Simple Start–a product with 15 years of sophisticated QuickBooks code lurking behind an interface even a Luddite could love–sold 100,000 units in its first year on the market.

Permanent link to Some information architecture tidbits

Filed under Design, User Experience, Web

Be the first to respond to "Some information architecture tidbits"

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

No responses yet.

And now it's your turn.

Fire your weapon, soldier. Just be careful of friendly fire. NAME & EMAIL required.

Your response