Toward a search dominant wayfinding paradigm (worth it?)

Hi all,

For the past several months I have been perseverating on the concept of creating a search-dominant wayfinding system for my web site: Adobe.com. Why, you may ask? My thought (and I know Jared, at minimum will disagree after having just listened to a recent podcast from him on this) is that as web users we are moving more and more in that direction - toward search as being a standard, hard-wired, lizard brain reflex when confronted with moving through the vasty content spaces that are out there. The Googles have had no small impact on our wayfinding approaches.

Meme check: search as last resort?
I wanted to call out and question a particular meme, namely: "search on sites like adobe.com is a function of last resort for those poor folks who aren't finding their trigger words in the page (nav or content). I know there is research on this so please hit me with it as necessary. But I can't help thinking that you could phrase a new approch like this: "People search first because that's how they are used to finding info". What do you think?

Why a search dominant wayfinding mode?
Any attempt on our part (UXers) to come up with appropriate linked words or images to use as nav in the hopes of getting users where we think they want to go is only a guess. Sometimes our guesses at nav are great but sometimes they totally fail. What we do know is that in every user's mind is an intent as they move through a web site. If we let that user type their intent into a search box then that is a step closer to (and more feasible than) creating the mind reading UI we all know would be best for users. Of course the next thing is: are the search results useful? But lets assume they were. Why in that case would we not want to create a search dominant wayfinding UI for folks.

*What would a search dominant wayfinding UI look like for a site that's not Google?*
It would probably have a very prominent search field. One of those giant novelty size web 2.0 style things perhaps. For a site like adobe.com it would probably also have some standard links such as "products" and "support", etc but those would not be the main focus. Perhaps search could even be used to generate the local navigation on subsections. Perhaps the search input field could be integrated into the page such that it could also act as a page title (an example is here http://bit.ly/o81Vp, although admittedly its a results page). An extreme example of a search only UI on the homepage is here: http://www.sequoiacap.com/.

Question: what are you thoughts on developing a search dominant wayfinding paradigm for a corporate site. I'd like to hear what you think.

Thanks,
David Hatch

At first I pushed back a bit; a natural reflex action ;-)

But on remembering my last couple of days troubleshooting some issues on my Mac I remember how good the Apple Support site search is now IF you have enough of the right search parameters at your grasp. If you are a newbie then you have far too many choices.

This leads me to think that if you have the right terminology at your disposal then search-based navigation is possible. This is growing over time in an average user as using a computer becomes more a part of everyday life, but I still know people who think that they have to put a URL into Google to find that site, even though they have the full URL!

This comes back to your level of experience and grasp of the "language" of a site. If you are hardened Adobe user, then it may work, but new users without your Adobe "language" may struggle with too broad a search return.

Next comes the issue to commercial policy - sorry to hit you at home David, but Adobe has a few of these that hinder finding stuff on the site using the existing navigational keys. Just ask any GoLive user (best prototyping tool for Graphic designers ever!)

Search may allow people access to areas that commercially a company want to make it a little more difficult to get to; kind of the web equivalent that the file is in a locked draw in a sub-basement with no lighting. Some financial institutions come to mind here. Disclosure - I've worked for a few that have asked about this.

Just a few thoughts and biases pinned to the flagpole.

Stephen Holmes
Canberra, ACT, Australia

"When you plant a tree, never plant only one. Plant three — one for shade, one for fruit, and one for beauty."
-African proverb

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

I agree that large corporate (and .edu and .gov) websites should at least seriously consider migrating to a search-centered strategy. Browsing rarely scales well. Site search is increasingly a choice of first resort. And, that's only when users don't parachute deep into the site via Google. This means that every destination is also a gateway. We can enhance the value of these findable and social objects through attention to IxD, IA and SEO. We make this case in our new book (Search Patterns), so you'll have to wait until January for more detail :-)

Peter Morville
President, Semantic Studios
http://semanticstudios.com/
http://findability.org/

Original Message
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of David Hatch Sent: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 7:10 PM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Toward a search dominant wayfinding paradigm (worthit?)
Hi all,

For the past several months I have been perseverating on the concept of creating a search-dominant wayfinding system for my web site: Adobe.com. Why, you may ask? My thought (and I know Jared, at minimum will disagree after having just listened to a recent podcast from him on this) is that as web users we are moving more and more in that direction - toward search as being a standard, hard-wired, lizard brain reflex when confronted with moving through the vasty content spaces that are out there. The Googles have had no small impact on our wayfinding approaches.

Meme check: search as last resort?
I wanted to call out and question a particular meme, namely: "search on sites like adobe.com is a function of last resort for those poor folks who aren't finding their trigger words in the page (nav or content). I know there is research on this so please hit me with it as necessary. But I can't help thinking that you could phrase a new approch like this: "People search first because that's how they are used to finding info". What do you think?

Why a search dominant wayfinding mode? Any attempt on our part (UXers) to come up with appropriate linked words or images to use as nav in the hopes of getting users where we think they want to go is only a guess. Sometimes our guesses at nav are great but sometimes they totally fail. What we do know is that in every user's mind is an intent as they move through a web site. If we let that user type their intent into a search box then that is a step closer to (and more feasible than) creating the mind reading UI we all know would be best for users. Of course the next thing is: are the search results useful? But lets assume they were. Why in that case would we not want to create a search dominant wayfinding UI for folks.

*What would a search dominant wayfinding UI look like for a site that's not Google?*
It would probably have a very prominent search field. One of those giant novelty size web 2.0 style things perhaps. For a site like adobe.com it would probably also have some standard links such as "products" and "support", etc but those would not be the main focus. Perhaps search could even be used to generate the local navigation on subsections. Perhaps the search input field could be integrated into the page such that it could also act as a page title (an example is here http://bit.ly/o81Vp, although admittedly its a results page). An extreme example of a search only UI on the homepage is here: http://www.sequoiacap.com/.

Question: what are you thoughts on developing a search dominant wayfinding paradigm for a corporate site. I'd like to hear what you think.

Thanks,
David Hatch

Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list . discuss at ixda.org Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines
http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help
http://www.ixda.org/help

Personally, I find value in the structure a well-designed product site affords. "Search" presumes that I know what I'm looking for, while "Browse" allows me to see and react to topics that interest me.

Very frequently, for instance, when I land on a product company's page, I'll browse to see what other products that company offers — at this point, I've decided that I'm interested enough to see what else the company has to offer.

I'm a big proponent of search as a supplement to browsing, but I'm not sure I'd go all the way to "search-dominant".

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

I recently performed a review of this site: www.autohound.ca. My initial reaction to the dominant homepage search options was "This is great. Rather than bombard me with options, I have a clear path." [Note: Since my review they've added some additional features that push the Search further down the page.]

Ignoring the usability and design issues of the Search / Refine functions, I ended up wondering if this type of approach was too narrow as it doesn't address the needs of:

In the end, I recommended (in addition to doing in-depth review, testing and revisions to Search/Refine function) maintaining a strong focus on the Search but also adding other access points.

Sara Durning

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

Peter is right on here... in theory. But in application it typically does not work.
The users with the greatest needs, within government sites in particular, do not have domain expertise. So they often do not know what to search for. Google has by far, the most productive and useful search algorithms on the planet. They are currently setting the expectations way high (which is a rear and really good thing). But if you spend any time on corporate or government sites you will find they pale in comparison. The indexing is bad... there is little allocation for cross referencing terminology and misspellings.

Navigation, classifications and the browsing process can be an incredibly powerful tool in bringing context to a users quest, especially when they do not really know what to look for.

Recent searches, most popular searches and help within the search are helping to bridge the gap between these to ways of finding stuff... but they are rare applications in intrasite search.

Mark

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 1:46 AM, David Lambert dlambert at appdev.info wrote:

Personally, I find value in the structure a well-designed product site affords. "Search" presumes that I know what I'm looking for, while "Browse" allows me to see and react to topics that interest me. Very frequently, for instance, when I land on a product company's page, I'll browse to see what other products that company offers — at this point, I've decided that I'm interested enough to see what else the company has to offer. I'm a big proponent of search as a supplement to browsing, but I'm not sure I'd go all the way to "search-dominant". [trim]

On Sep 24, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Peter Morville wrote:

I agree that large corporate (and .edu and .gov) websites should at least seriously consider migrating to a search-centered strategy.

I predict this will fail.

Browsing rarely scales well.

Nothing scales well, but I believe a well tuned IA is going to outplay a search engine any day. Facets scale best, for many types of data.

Site search is increasingly a choice of first resort.

There is no evidence to support this.

It's a matter of the nature of the content. If people know unique identifiers (exact titles, authors, part numbers), then search will always trump any category hierarchy or facets. That's why media products (such as books and music) do well with search.

However, search on data where the people don't have unique identifiers (such as much of the content one might find on the Adobe.com site) doesn't do well. Users enter generic keywords into search and the results presentation is rarely helpful.

I'm going to bet that if David looks closely at Adobe.com's stats, most of the users don't try search from the home page. If they try search, it will be from somewhere deep in the site. This tells me that they are using search to recover from a failure in IA. They couldn't find what they were looking for by following trigger words, so they resorted to Search (where, what they enter into the Search box is their trigger words).

That's my take.

Jared

I agree that search on many corporate and government sites is terrible (and lags far behind e-commerce). It doesn't have to stay that way, but in most cases it will require a significant investment in technology and design to make search better. That's why framing it as a strategic shift towards a search-centered experience is worthwhile. That said, of course other modes of interaction such as asking and browsing will remain important. They all need to work together. But search can no longer be treated as an afterthought or add-on.

Also, it's worth noting that there's good work being done on exploratory search...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratory_search

...which deals explicitly with cases in which users don't know what to search for.

Peter Morville
President, Semantic Studios
http://semanticstudios.com/
http://findability.org/

Original Message
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of mschraad
Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 11:46 AM
To: David Lambert
Cc: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Toward a search dominant wayfinding paradigm(worth it?)

Peter is right on here... in theory. But in application it typically does not work.
The users with the greatest needs, within government sites in particular, do not have domain expertise. So they often do not know what to search for. Google has by far, the most productive and useful search algorithms on the planet. They are currently setting the expectations way high (which is a rear and really good thing). But if you spend any time on corporate or government sites you will find they pale in comparison. The indexing is bad... there is little allocation for cross referencing terminology and misspellings.

Navigation, classifications and the browsing process can be an incredibly powerful tool in bringing context to a users quest, especially when they do not really know what to look for.

Recent searches, most popular searches and help within the search are helping to bridge the gap between these to ways of finding stuff... but they are rare applications in intrasite search.

Mark

A debate with Jared about the stinkyness of site search? I'm having a flashback ;-)

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000004.php

...now, I'm not about to argue against the value of information architecture...that would feel a little strange...I just don't understand why folks insist on pitting search and browse against one another. We need both and they need to work together. Sites that employ faceted navigation serve as a good example. In my experience over the past few years, I've seen plenty of investment in information architecture (browse/navigation in particular) and not enough in getting search right.

Okay, I'm going back into lurker mode now...I have to finish my book about search :-)

Peter Morville
President, Semantic Studios
http://semanticstudios.com/
http://findability.org/

Original Message From: Jared Spool [mailto:jspool at uie.com] Sent: Thursday, September 24, 2009 12:08 PM To: Peter Morville Cc: discuss at ixda.org Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Toward a search dominant wayfinding paradigm (worthit?) On Sep 24, 2009, at 9:18 AM, Peter Morville wrote: I agree that large corporate (and .edu and .gov) websites should at least seriously consider migrating to a search-centered strategy.

I predict this will fail.

Browsing rarely scales well.

Nothing scales well, but I believe a well tuned IA is going to outplay a search engine any day. Facets scale best, for many types of data.

Site search is increasingly a choice of first resort.

There is no evidence to support this.

It's a matter of the nature of the content. If people know unique identifiers (exact titles, authors, part numbers), then search will always trump any category hierarchy or facets. That's why media products (such as books and music) do well with search.

However, search on data where the people don't have unique identifiers (such as much of the content one might find on the Adobe.com site) doesn't do well. Users enter generic keywords into search and the results presentation is rarely helpful.

I'm going to bet that if David looks closely at Adobe.com's stats, most of the users don't try search from the home page. If they try search, it will be from somewhere deep in the site. This tells me that they are using search to recover from a failure in IA. They couldn't find what they were looking for by following trigger words, so they resorted to Search (where, what they enter into the Search box is their trigger words).

That's my take.

Jared

I agree when you say that the search function is a very important way to allow the users to find out the information they are looking for. But this should not substitute the "traditional" navigation.

The http://www.sequoiacap.com/ site, for example, has zero information scent. I can't guess the contents of the site, and therefore I can not know which words I should use to get some information from their search engine.

I think a site should not choose a "search dominant" approach, but a user centered one.
The user should decide how to navigate the site and how to find out what he is looking for.

A good navigation, with an high information scent AND a good search function should be provided.

None of them, of course, are trivial to design.

Stefano

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

Whenever I see a debate about wayfinding I think of Donna Spencer's excellent article for Boxes and Arrows, "Four Modes of Information Seeking and How to Design for Them"

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view /four _modes _of _seeking _information _and _how _to _design _for _them

It's a nice way to open up the dialogue about search vs browse into the psychology that predicates both and the design choices we have to meet those behaviors.

%u201CThe most important issue is not whether you notice a mode of seeking information that fits into one of these categories, but that a range of modes exist.%u201D DSpencer

(ps. I bear no known relation to Donna. I know her as Donna Maurer.)

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

A relevant quote from Avinash Kaushik (Google's analytics wizard):

"In the good old days, people dutifully used site navigation at the left, right, or top of a website. But, two websites have fundamentally altered how we navigate the web: Amazon, because the site is so big, sells so many things, and is so complicated that many of us go directly to the site search box on arrival. And Google, which has trained us to show up, type what we want, and hit the search button.

Now when people show up at a website, many of them ignore our lovingly crafted navigational elements and jump to the site search box. The increased use of site search as a core navigation method makes it very important to understand the data that site search generates."

You can read the rest here (it's an excellent read): http://www.alistapart.com/articles /internal -site -search -analysis -simple -effective -life -altering /

Also, one more aspect of search dominance is the screen size you're working with...mobile makes showing large navigation structures difficult at best.

Just one example: Amazon's iPhone app is completely search dominant. (there is no IA to speak of)

Josh On Sep 24, 2009, at 12:44 PM, Peter Morville wrote:

A debate with Jared about the stinkyness of site search? I'm having a flashback ;-) http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000004.php ...now, I'm not about to argue against the value of information architecture...that would feel a little strange...I just don't understand why folks insist on pitting search and browse against one another. We need both and they need to work together. Sites that employ faceted navigation serve as a good example. In my experience over the past few years, I've seen plenty of investment in information architecture (browse/navigation in particular) and not enough in getting search right. Okay, [trim]

This may just be my bias after designing both search and taxonomy systems for a few really big companies, but I doubt that searching is actually replacing browsing. Rather, it seems that search technology has improved such that searching is finding its proper niche in the user experience.

While researching critical usability issues for a large corporate search engine, the pareto showed "MAKE IT FIND THINGS!" went off the charts, in comparison to every other issue or feature we could address or add.

While building the corporate business unit taxonomy for the same company, we learned very quickly that no one would bother going further than 3 levels deep into the tree, without searching, which encompassed a whopping 10% of the total company hierarchy. We designed and built that, left the rest to searching, and achieved the best of both worlds, IMHO.

With a decent search engine, it's nice not to have to cram every single site destination in one global nav system. Conversely, with a simple taxonomy that covers the "hard to finds", you don't need to completely re-engineer your search engine to bring up the founder's biography every time you search for "about us".

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

As a somewhat interesting tangent... when I was working in portal world we introduced vertical or channel specific search. As almost an after thought we included sponsored links. The revenue stream turn out to be wildly beyond our expectations. Were we new to the indexing process... and as we got better at it (better search results for the user) our gsl revenue declined. It made for interesting conversations between the revenue folks and the UX folks.
Mark

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:14 AM, Bryan Minihan bjminihan at gmail.com wrote:

This may just be my bias after designing both search and taxonomy systems for a few really big companies, but I doubt that searching is actually replacing browsing. Rather, it seems that search technology has improved such that searching is finding its proper niche in the user experience. While researching critical usability issues for a large corporate search engine, the pareto showed "MAKE IT FIND THINGS!" went off the charts, in comparison to every other issue or feature we could address or add. While building the corporate business unit taxonomy for the same company, we learned very [trim]

It's a matter of the nature of the content. If people know unique identifiers (exact titles, authors, part numbers), then search will always trump any category hierarchy or facets. That's why media products (such as books and music) do well with search. However, search on data where the people don't have unique identifiers (such as much of the content one might find on the Adobe.com site) doesn't do well. Users enter generic keywords into search and the results presentation is rarely helpful.

plug
Seconded. Especially since I just finished proofing the chapter Jared and I did about this very subject for our upcoming book, Web Anatomy http://www.rhjr.net/s/wa,
in stores in November.
/plug

-r-

Google IS your dominant wayfinding paradigme.

Just become one with their search algorithm and keep the site as it is.

A lot of Adobe is about not knowing what you don't know.

If I know what I want I am going to search google and then hopefully you have the answer.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

I'm really enjoying this discussion. To my mind it depends on the degree of complexity and context of information within the site to create a balance of search methods.

Related to context, users using search is inversely proportional to context. The greater the context the users' need affords (a small site focusing a specific needs) the less the user relies on search... and they tend to use alternative search methods: navigation, labels, imagery, copy to locate the information.

No doubt I'm sure there are caveats to this notion?

-- Rob

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

So you are the one of the ones responsible for turning adobe's god-awful site into something at least usable?

There is a long way yet to go. I don't think a search-based paradigm is the way to go. Let google get people to your pages by search.

I see adobe site users as falling into 3 groups. Those who want to buy something specific already. Those who want help learning your terribly designed, but inescapably powerful products. And those who don't know what they need.

The first set are easy, That is what your landing page should take care of. No one will type in adobe.com and not know at least sort of what they need.

If your help system is well indexed and easy to navigate (which it isn't) you'll be able to deal with group 2.

So group 3 is really who you are trying address.

To know what they need, you need to understand what subgroups they fall into. People scouting for info on what apps to buy for the designers at work. People who want things like PS elements or lightroom for their photo collection but don't know they need that. (I'm using the term 'want' loosely)

adobe.com is fast on its way to not being on my bottom 10 sites online anymore. It is now the best designed app you offer. But that's not saying much.

There was a time when everything was some patchwork mess of flash and huge graphics and incomprehensible doodads. I get it, you are a graphic design oriented software company, but at least now it looks like you actually care about how the site is used and not just what it looks like.

But please don't go search-centric. Bad move. A better move would be to try and figure out how and why someone got to a page. Want to be search centric? Use the search terms they used in google to get to your page to offer other things YOUR search would have given them. Hell, give them the option to repeat the SAME EXACT search they just used on google to get to you. You can do it, you have the referer.

I want the isolationism in sites to die. DIE DEAD.

Google is your friend. They did a fine job of getting the user to whatever page they got to. Don't try to replace them with some other internal search, that won't ever be as good as google. (Unless you are using a GSA which it looks like you might be.)

But a GSA is NOT big google.

However, giving an internal search based on GSA results in the form of suggestions based on keywords from the page mixed with the user's initial query that got them to that page from google or another search WOULD be totally bad-ass.

I guess what I mean is that search-centric navigation is awesome if the search is big google and will leave you wanting if you rely on it alone internally.

And to address your meme thoughts. People don't search first. They google first.

Yes, google is search. But people don't think like it is. It is almost (and literally in most browsers) part of the browsing interface.

People will get to, and your data will totally back this up, adobe.com by typing adobe.com into google and then clicking the link. Lots of them.

You can't beat it. Make it work for you instead.

I think the root cause of these search-centric thought processes is the misconception that www.adobe.com is your front door. It isn't. All your content pages are your front door. Or more accurately, google is your front door. Or really your hallway.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

David,

I've been watching my wife and son struggle while learning to use Adobe products, searching through help and online using their own words or descriptions for what they think they want to do, knowing the answers are locked up somewhere in a vault they can't identify. Eventually, they may stumble upon "Object / Live Trace / Make and Expand" or "Layer / Create clipping mask", but probably they won't. My wife was working in Photoshop the other day when I came home, looking frustrated after trying to figure out how to get her image back after saving it in another format and size, having Googled all up one side and down the other. That one was gone, but I showed her "Save for the Web" and she was good for the next time. Why didn't she consider that choice in the first place? Because she was trying to "Save for the Book".

Because Adobe products form a strange parallel universe all their own, with Terms Not Found In Nature, it's hard to know what to look for unless you already know what it is you're looking for. I'm not sure if search on the Adobe website will solve that problem. But please, somewhere in your decision process, take some time to watch novices struggle to learn your products, and do your best to help them succeed. Thanks,

Michael Micheletti

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:10 PM, David Hatch hatch at adobe.com wrote:

Hi all, For the past several months I have been perseverating on the concept of creating a search-dominant wayfinding system for my web site: Adobe.com. Why, you may ask? My thought (and I know Jared, at minimum will disagree after having just listened to a recent podcast from him on this) is that as web users we are moving more and more in that direction - toward search as being a standard, hard-wired, lizard brain reflex when confronted with moving through the vasty content spaces that are out there. The Googles have had no small impact on our [trim]

-- Michael Micheletti
michael.micheletti at gmail.com

Your message immediately brought to mind a comment from Jeff Atwood discussing Stackoverflow
-

"Google is our interface".

I think this sort of thinking is especially pertinent to any site that has a knowledge base function.

Clearly a huge generalisation, but it's probably worth remembering that many users will search your site with Google(other search engines are available), so your search function is almost always going to be at best a second resort.

-Sam

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

I agree with the idea of search being a powerful interface and that "Google is our interface" idea. Even app launchers like Quicksilver (OSX) have worked very well and they are fundamentally search.

However there are a few points that make it not so simple

1. From an experience standpoint the difference is same as asking a customer to go to front desk and ask about something v/s approaching the customer and introducing yourself. That applies to marketing messages but also to navigation. Search is more in the category of asking customer to go to a front desk - I think there is an impersonal feeling to it.

I looked at Sequio capital example and it just makes me stop and think what should I do next

2. Recognition v/s recall - Search requires recall of sorts, there is a decision required on how to form the query and more. Browsing on the other hand is more on the recognition side.

3. From a business standpoint you do want to make the customer aware of the products without being dependent on the user asking the right question because in many case they might not know that a particular kind of product is offered by Adobe.

I think what will help is a simplification of product listing, currently it's just a list of product names with every variation, for e.g. Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 extended, there are 12 flash related products and so on.I think the customer would need better guidance.

- Alok Jain (AJ)

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45983

The default browse experience has several simultaneous goals. One of those goals is to give a visitor some sense of what that site is about and what can be expected to be found there. It helps orient a visitor and provide context, whether the 'tabs' get clicked or not.

But the idea that everything in that site has to exist on some clickable, static hierarchy of tree structures is possibly becoming an obsolete notion, due to the sheer scale of such sites, especially user-generated behemoths and "we sell everything" e-shops.

In these cases, there's more of a continuum between searching and browsing.

In fact, Search, done well, is essentially dynamic, custom browsing.

Even if I navigate Amazon by clicking categories until I get to a product list that interests me, it's being generated dynamically. And the deeper I go, the higher the percentage of links I see that are there uniquely because of my behavior and product choices. These are all being driven by sophisticated search queries kicked off by my click-to-browse activity.

Essentially I'm getting at this point: this search vs browse thing is more and more a false dichotomy. The navigation super-structures are becoming much more about utility than content ... such as on Flickr, where the navigation has much more to do with what I do with photos (sort, search, explore, share, etc) than the categories of photos themselves, which is mostly being driven by user activity.

-- andrew hinton / inkblurt.com

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Andrew Hinton inkblurt at gmail.com wrote:

In fact, Search, done well, is essentially dynamic, custom browsing.

That in it's self is rendering 'sense of place' as a less than effective a metaphor.

Good point ... that's why I've been leaning more toward thinking in terms of Context, which is related to place (and cognitively shares some brain matter with how we process & navigate physical space), but thinking of this sort of space in terms of context allows for the fluidity we find in digitally based experiences.

It also allows us to think in terms of the user's context, which informs their understanding of (and merges with) how we've arranged, categorized and named things.

Of course, that's all kind of wishy-washy theoretical talk that I'm afraid isn't immediately helpful to the kind soul from Adobe who started this thread :-)

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 3:08 PM, mark schraad mschraad at gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Andrew Hinton inkblurt at gmail.com wrote: In fact, Search, done well, is essentially dynamic, custom browsing. That in it's self is rendering 'sense of place' as a less than effective a metaphor.

-- andrew hinton / inkblurt.com

Hi all,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Lots of thoughtful replies and additional info for me to go track down. While there are a few responses from folks that encourage a search dominant approach (Peter Morville) the majority of responders trended toward recommending a hybrid approach to search/browse, some who would emphasis search more and some who'd rely more on browse nav for a site like adobe.com (Jared Spool).

The example I gave for http://www.sequoiacap.com/ was intended as a furthest-down-the-spectrum extreme and while interesting, I don't think would work well for adobe.com. Whether or not it works well for Sequoia Capital I will let them say. But hats off to them for a bold direction nonetheless! (Would love to hear from the designers there about that.)

The biggest reason given by responders on this list to be at least a bit wary of a search dominant nav approach relates to the worry that folks often will not type in the exact terms they need in order to arrive at the content we have provided for them. OK, we try to speak in a users language as UXers but we don't always get it right. And even if we did match some users we would not match others. So that's a problem.

But since I'm not willing to give in just yet, I like the idea of using "bridging" utilities such as "related searches" "popular searches". I also like using course correction and or narrowing/broadening options of faceted navy generated after a search to better get users to where they want to go. But even the best bridging techniques will not work in the case of Michael Micheletti's wife who was looking for a term in no way related to the way the web site had titled their resource that answered her question.

From Alok Jain: "Search requires recall of sorts, there is a decision required on how to form the query and more. Browsing on the other hand is more on the recognition side." I like this and would add that there is much less cognitive muscle required on the part of the user to point and say "that" when presented with the proper stimulus than to formulate a question (a higher order skill). That said, there are only so many "thats" we can generate for users to click on which comes to the whole browse nav not scaling very well thing. [trim]

The prevailing wisdom of this group is to rock the hybrid approach phrased fictionally as "Yes, make search work better don't put all your eggs in that basket and please invest real time in rethinking the trigger words for the browse structure to better reflect user needs."

So much more to think about here but again I really appreciated the thoughts from you all on this. It was especially fun to see Peter and Jared face off on this. An old argument I guess. And to William Brall, yes I am one of the ones. Wish me luck as there is a lot of work to do.

As an aside question: many web sites including adobe.com position the search box in the upper right corner of the screen which is also the position of the browser search box (when enabled). One of the reasons I wanted to put it there is to capitalize on the expectation of place established by browsers. But its similarity in placement may cause users to type into the wrong box by mistake. Does anyone have any usability best practices on placement of search boxes?

Thanks again,
David

On 9/29/09 2:04 PM, "Andrew Hinton" inkblurt at gmail.com wrote:

Good point ... that's why I've been leaning more toward thinking in terms of Context, which is related to place (and cognitively shares some brain matter with how we process & navigate physical space), but thinking of this sort of space in terms of context allows for the fluidity we find in digitally based experiences.

It also allows us to think in terms of the user's context, which informs their understanding of (and merges with) how we've arranged, categorized and named things.

Of course, that's all kind of wishy-washy theoretical talk that I'm afraid isn't immediately helpful to the kind soul from Adobe who started this thread :-)

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 3:08 PM, mark schraad mschraad at gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Andrew Hinton inkblurt at gmail.com wrote: In fact, Search, done well, is essentially dynamic, custom browsing. That in it's self is rendering 'sense of place' as a less than effective a metaphor.

-- andrew hinton / inkblurt.com

Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list . discuss at ixda.org
Unsubscribe .... http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help http://www.ixda.org/help

On Oct 5, 2009, at 8:03 PM, David Hatch wrote:
From Alok Jain: "Search requires recall of sorts, there is a decision required on how to form the query and more. Browsing on the other hand is more on the recognition side." I like this and would add that there is much less cognitive muscle required on the part of the user to point and say "that" when presented with the proper stimulus than to formulate a question (a higher order skill). That said, there are only so many "thats" we can generate for users to click on which comes to the whole browse nav not scaling very well [trim]

This reminds me of an insight Rashmi Sinha had about tagging quite some time back.

http://rashmisinha.com/2005 /09 /27 /a -cognitive -analysis -of -tagging /

Rashmi's argument is kind of the opposite of Alok's.

Instead of category recognition being easier, it might actually be harder because it forces people to translate between what they have in their head and what the site has in its navigation. In other words, you have to make a decision (sometimes several decisions) about which category your thing is in.

Search, on the other hand, takes advantage of what you already know...the words in your head. All you have to do is type them in. I would argue that "how to form a query" is an overstated problem...a bigger problem might be "find your term in this pile of terms".

Of course, the primary difference between tagging and search is that when you refind something with tags you're actually comparing your current tag with past tags that you have created. In search you're comparing your search term with the site's terms, so there isn't any of you in the set. (This is why creating search systems is so hard...nobody is saying it is easy)

So it's not clear that browsing is any easier than searching from a cognitive standpoint. In the same way that Rashmi describes tagging as "eliminating the decision of choosing the right category" search also "eliminates the decision of choosing the right category"...it doesn't force the user to do any matching between what's in their head and what's on the site. Search engines, when done well, does that matching for them.

Josh