connecting*the*dots

I’m currently working to prep the project environment of one of my clients — a domain that relies on ad sales for survival. The stakeholders have hired me to lead the redesign of their site, which includes the information architecture. Knowing the degree of “get it” in the domain, I need to provide easily digestible “IA” education before I can move forward with my design methodology to improve the tactical findability of their most valuable content.

Yes, it’s a typical IA consulting gig, but I’d like to establish a reusable approach; not for creating explicit architectural solutions across different project types, but with a presentation of explicit, findability techniques.

I’m looking for feedback of my current progress, so if you’d like to participate, feel free to comment on this post or contact me at spcoon [at] seancoon [dot] org. Please feel free to point me to any existing work available online as well. Once I’ve pulled together my findings, I’ll iterate my work and release it into the ’sphere for anyone to use.

The Baseline

Humor me for a moment and try to forget everything you know about classification, structure and order. Instead, imagine that the only element of a web site (we care about) is the most holistic/granular information object:

• On flickr, it would be the image page
• On Amazon, it would be the product page
• On Wired, it would be the article page

Now imagine that your goal is to increase stickiness across this entire object level. Remember, the revenue model is ad sales, so the more content explored, the better for my client.

Each of the previously mentioned domains have crafted specific information architectures to accomplish this goal of “stickiness.” They also have extremely different revenue models, so the “value” of findability is relative to the nature of the product, the domain’s degree of advertising/marketing and the bottom line.

For example, flickr image pages aren’t weighed down with contextual recommendations of similar images from other users (similar to how products are displayed on an Amazon product page) but the inclusion of a simple globe icon next to an image’s tag does expose index pages of similarly tagged photos from other users. This increases discovery, which both entertains me (the user) and increases page views for potential ad clickthroughs.

Different context; similar goals. Expose avenues of findability in the interface to increase domain stickiness.

I’m currently illustrating technique similarities (that are not domain specific) for optimizing information architectures to expose valuable content. Again, consider this exercise an effort to describe a baseline standard, or best practices for findability that can be reused in one way or another across project types.

Along these lines, I’m clarifying techniques by using non-specific terminology (i.e. contextual and relational are generic terms, as compared to collaborative filtering). Secondly, I plan on augmenting the illustration for this particular client by labeling specific values (a 1 to 10 scale, possibly) to the various avenues of findability, distinguishing the value proposition (ROI) between focusing on, say, relational discovery compared to categorical browsing. I won’t be able to complete this second part until user research has been finalized.

Here’s my current list of best practices:

• Object level contextual discovery: Hyperlinks to contextual content, embeded within the primary object of the page (i.e. hyperlinks within an article to other articles, linked notes on a flickr image, etc.)
• Object level relational discovery: Accessible related objects, determined via appropriateness (i.e. as simple as “Related Articles” or as complex as “Other shoppers purchased…”)
• Object to index level relational discovery: Using tags to move from the object level to the index level (i.e. flickr globe icons, del.icio.us tags, etc.)
• Index level relational discovery: Related tags presented from a mass sample of tagged objects (i.e. a tag search on Technorati creates a list of related tags to the original query on the index page)
• Tag/Meta-data search: Optimizing tagging to improve the results when searching objects that have been explicitly tagged (i.e. Gmail labels, Technorati tags, flickr tags, etc.)
• Full-text search: Optimizing objects and result pages to increase precision and to manage recall into precise, secondary, relational options in the presentation layer
• Categorical navigation: Traditional top-down navigation, with a focus on keeping categories both shallow and non-cascading, while keeping the breadth of topical choices as narrow as possible

The diagram (177kb .pdf) displays another element — Third party relational discovery, which is specific to partner deals with external domains.

Ideas, feedback, critique; all appreciated.

I’m really liking where the Amazon UI is heading.

Not to say that their interface has been devoid of good design decisions over the past 9 years. I mean, they were the first e-commerce company to truly leverage collaborative filtering, essentially taking advantage of The Long Tail of online consumerism, long before the terminology was officially anointed within the context of new media. Just getting those features into the interface — placing more eyes on more products — drove the business model and the promise of the New Economy circa 1998.

But crafting the balance between user search, participatory and discovery scenarios within the interface was definitely an afterthought. As a matter of fact, at one point in time, it seemed that Amazon had little concern for any interaction design considerations within the interface at all, satisfied to add features within a scroll-driven, hierarchical construct to no end.

Well, that has seemingly changed. Check out a new test version of the product page:

Am I the only one standing up and applauding? The interface now completely supports the common needs of all users at a point-of-purchase.

1. Clearly display the product price & savings
2. Show the product itself
3. Provide the ability to purchase it or add it to a Wish List
4. Then provide the ability to move into search, participatory or discovery scenarios

Amazon reduced the cognitive friction of the previous interface
by removing the bookend columns of contextual navigation and by moving only the highest priority scenario features (reading reviews and looking inside/searching the book) under the primary sales window. The affordance for the DHTML window on the product image needs to be increased, as it is currently one of purely learned behavior, but the simplicity of the new interface does wonders in focusing my attention.

Take a look at the old interface in comparrison:

For someone that has reached the conclusion of their search or discovery scenario, the shopping experience is now set up for the user to determine price feasibility, drop the product into their cart and either head for checkout or continue to discover.

For someone who’s in the midst of a discovery process, the interface hasn’t changed for the worse, as an anchor link still drops the user down to user reviews. It’s now just better placed. The interface continues to present other collaborative filtering information below the fold. With these smart design decisions, Amazon now finds itself in a position to add elegant customization, because elegant design parameters have been established.

The Amazon jungle is evolving, and in very smart fashion. In my book, that’s pretty cool.

My day at work today centered around getting pissed off about the upcoming war; the commute home got even more interesting.

First, for the comedy relief of the day. I’m waiting for the N/R train on the Cortlandt Street platform, when I look across the track and notice this older gentleman, probably in his mid-sixties, dressed conservatively in a gray suit, casually drop his paper on the platform and stroll away. My first thought was, "Ok. He just littered. Maybe that’s how people acted before Woodsy the Owl. Give him the benefit of the doubt." So I did, and went back to scanning my own rag. That’s when I hear water splashing down on the track.

In the midst of the afternoon commute rush, the same guy is urinating onto the tracks. No one knows what to do. All of us were deer in the headlights, caught watching this unfold. The guy didn’t look drunk and was dressed in a nice suit. He eventually finished (old guy = bad prostate), but the kicker? He strolls back to his paper, picks it up and goes back to reading. Ha.

So I finally get on the train and manage to find a seat. At the next stop, the women next to me gets off and a guy squeezes between the doors and sits down in her place. Nothing out of the ordinary. So during my daily dose of conservative subway people watching (i.e. don’t look at anyone for more than two seconds and only in glances), I notice the new guy reading a miniature copy of something that looks like Arabic, bobbing his head up and down… pausing… and then mumbling to himself. He’d then reopen the finely bounded/crafted book for a half second, look up in the air, and then go back to mumbling.

Now, I’ve been traveling the NYC subway system for years, and to my best recollection, the only people I’ve ever noticed reading like that have been Orthodox Jews traveling with me from Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan. So here I find myself during the month of "Shock and Awe," sitting next to a guy with a mustache as thick as Saddam’s, dressed in a green army jacket, mumbling to himself while reading Arabic prose.

Welcome to New York City, the cultural Mecca of Western Civilization—the only place where one can feel enlightened daily by the vast diversity of people surrounding you, yet simultaneously fear for your life because of the actions of your government and media outlets.

I’m pretty sure (about 99 & 44/100%) that this guy was praying and looking inward during a rough time in his life or something, yet his actions, which at any other time wouldn’t catch my eye or stir my hand to write about, got me second guessing my safety. This type of irrational fear is what the majority of this country doesn’t understand when they blindly back a poorly sponsored and irrational war.

The “red states” of this nation don’t land anywhere near the top twenty terror spots to hit in America (I have the celebrity map, you know). So while Billy Bob and soccer mom 12,614 “support the government fully to protect us” in very vaguely defined ways, people over here in NYC start to look for exits whether we’re underground, on the streets, or inside our office buildings.

I hate the fact that these thoughts even crept into my skull. As hard as it has been to be a New Yorker over the last few years, being a Muslim New Yorker must take the cake for “king of all shitty positions.”

Well, I guess it’s better than being Muslim in Ohio.