Top-10 Information Architecture Mistakes

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for May 11 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia-mistakes.html

Summary:
Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search
and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy
UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need.

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Usability Week 2009 conference

  > London, May 17-22 
  > San Francisco, June 22-27 
  > New York City, July 13-17 
  > Sydney, July 27-August 1

In-depth training:
  > 3-day camp on Usability in Practice

Specialized topics:
  > 14 in-depth tutorials

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

SAN FRANCISCO DEADLINE to save 10% on early-bird registration:
  > This Friday, May 15
  > Same deadline for 13% reduced room rates at our SF hotel

LONDON DEADLINE to save £150 on advance registration:
  > This Friday, May 15

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EXAMPLES WANTED:
Intranet Governance Issues

We are working on a new whitepaper on Intranet Governance. The following
are just some of the topics we will explore in this report:

   - How should an intranet team be structured?
   - Branding and advertising/promoting the intranet
   - Advisory councils or governing boards
   - Intranet ownership
   - Stakeholder participation
   - Evolution & adoption
   - Change management
   - Content ownership/best practices
   - Corporate culture
   - ROI

We are looking for companies that have insights into all aspects of
intranet governance, companies that can discuss their real world
experience: successes and challenges. Our research tells us that very few
companies have mastered governance so don't feel your process has to be
perfect in order to participate.

If you can contribute examples, case study insights, lessons learned or
challenges we would like to speak to you about your experiences.
 
If you are interested in participating please contact Patty Caya with a
brief overview of your interest in this research: [email protected]

More info:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/governance

Deadline: May 29

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DEEMPHASIZING OVERLY SPECIFIC UI DETAILS
	
Sometimes modest design tweaks exhibit brilliance. Look at the URL bar in
Internet Explorer 8: Most of the URL is displayed in a muted color,
leaving the actual domain name to stand out. For example, if you follow
the above link to Nielsen Norman Group's website, you'll see "nngroup.com"
prominently, making it easy to know what site you're on.

(Of course, this works even better on sites that have a pronounceable
name, such as amazon.com.)

If you read this newsletter you know vastly more about the Web than any
normal user. Thus, you may not appreciate how confusing URLs still are for
most people, to this day.

IE8 did well by focusing users' attention on the most salient part of the
current URL: the site they're on. Simply by using two different colors and
muting the noisy parts of the URL, this design has increased the usability
of the Web for non-nerds.

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MUSEUM IA

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has restructured the display of American
art. Previously, objects were sorted by the material used, leading to
boring rooms filled with 200 silver coffee pots. Now, objects are sorted
by artistic style, so you can compare how different artists used different
materials during the same period of time.

(Of course, it would be ideal to have both structures, but polyhierarchy
is hard to achieve with physical objects. The Web does have its
advantages.)

  > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/arts/design/05met.html

I also like another aspect of the exhibit redesign: computers are provided
with more info about the museum objects, but with a scaled-back visual
design that encourages visitors to focus on the actual objects instead of
pictures of them.

Too many museums have Web-envy instead of respecting their own media form,
which is that of the real, physical objects.

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KINDLE DX – DISAPPOINTING

The new, bigger Kindle DX has a screen resolution of 824x1200 pixels, for
a total of 989 Kpx. This is twice the 480 Kpx on the Kindle 2 (resolution
600x800 pixels). Since DX only costs 36% more than the smaller tablet it's
a good deal on a cents-per-Kpx basis: 49 vs. 75 cents. (Though my Dell
30-inch monitor is only 27 cents/Kpx – in color.)

Unfortunately, crispness has been sacrificed in the move to a bigger
tablet. The DX only has 150 dpi, compared to Kindle 2's 176 dpi.

  > http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10234952-23.html

Reduced crispness means fuzzier fonts, which again means reduced
legibility and slower reading speed. Thus, Kindle DX is not likely to
replicate the pleasant reading experience of Kindle 2. This is
particularly catastrophic since it's intended for reading textbooks which
are dense in word count.

Combining the bigger screen with a PDF capability means that Kindle DX can
in fact display textbook pages in their original layout, which will make
it better for reading non-fiction, except for the fact that many better
books are designed with the page-spread as the unit of layout. For
example, my own books sometimes provide a full-sized screenshot on one
page and the associated caption on the facing page. (At a minimum, our
book designers aim to place illustrations on the page facing the
discussion of that picture in the body text.)

Seeing only one page at a time will reduce students' ability to learn,
relative to reading books that display two-page spreads as the designer
and author intended.

(As an aside, even though I am critical of PDF as a format for browsing
Web-based information, such as product specs, it's great for displaying
book pages on a tablet like Kindle. I applaud Amazon for embracing PDF in
this device.)

Kindle DX retains most of the downsides of Kindle 2, in particular awkward
interaction design and slow response times. (And monochrome illustrations,
but I can easily imagine them moving to a color display in the next
release.)

In summary, Kindle DX is not likely to be a good substitute for reading
printed textbooks or newspapers, particularly if newspapers are not
redesigned for the device, but simply transmitted as repurposed full-text
files:

  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/kindle-writing.html

I don't even think Kindle DX will be as good as the Kindle 2 for reading
fiction, because of the reduced crispness and likelihood of reduced
reading speed. (We have to await somebody doing a controlled reading speed
study, though, before we know for sure.)

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TWITTER USABILITY

BusinessWeek Q&A with Jakob Nielsen about Twitter usability and its impact
on company productivity:

  > http://tr.im/BWeekTwit

Why is Twitter growing so quickly? Because it's even easier to Tweet than
to write a normal blog. Now, you don't even have to write a full
paragraph; a line will suffice.

The entire UI is a small text box plus an "update" button.

Weblogs and MySpace were previous examples of the point that
USABILITY DRIVES USE: the easier you make something,
the more people will do it.

  (1) It was pretty easy to publish content through a blog
      hosting service.
  (2) And it's pretty easy to make your own glittering Web
      page on MySpace. 
  (3) But it's even easier to generate a 140-character thought
      and put it out on Twitter. Thus, lots of people do so.

Conversely, for readers, because Tweets are so short, it's an easy job to
scan through a bunch of them in minimal time, so the burden is low even if
you follow a bunch of people. Certainly lower than reading the same number
of blogs.