Enterprise Information Architecture by Rosenfeld

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Enterprise Information Architecture: Because users don't care about your org chart

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Webpage Island in Google

IA and usability issues are everywhere. Today I want to get some references on Google operators, such as "define:". I searched and ended up with this page: http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/operators.html

I want to see where this page belongs to, so checked the links on the left menu. Surprisingly none of them links back to the current page. The most likely one is the "Advanced Search" menu item, since it is bolded, which implies that this is the current section. The link for the "Advanced Search" is http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/refinesearch.html which looks consistent. But then I was redirected to http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861 Now it seems the site is undergoing a transitioning phase and the "Advanced Operator" page is just left behind.

BTW, I also read this on this page: "More information on these types of operators is available on the Basics of Search page. Many of these special operators are accessible from the Advanced Search page, but some are not." The last sentence is very strange: "but some are not." Then where are these "some"?

The Google help is now more functional and structured in terms of navigation, but I think it has a long way to go. I think MSDN library is much better.

Too much content on homepage?

A homepage, or a front page, is the landing page of a website. There are tons of usability guidelines for homepage design (see a list below), but one of least discussed questions is: how much content should be put on the homepage? Usually a homepage contains the following content:

• Recent news or updates
• Feature contents preview
• Summary of sub-sections
• All sorts of gadgets and links
• Advertisement (they take a lot of spaces!)
• Other common contents like title, menu, footer, etc.

The idea of including as much content as possible follows a flat structure design. So that users can quickly navigate to the content they desire. However, the problem is a user can lose the focus easily. A heavy loaded homepage (like nba.com) may actually slow down a user's navigation because he/she spends more time on browsing the homepage. On the other hand, a too simple homepage (like google.com) may also slow down a user's operation if he/she has to follow a certain path of clicks to the desired content every time.

So, how much content is enough and balanced for a homepage? I think a general 7+-2 rule may offer some help:

• Divide the homepage into sections (chunks); include at most 7+-2 of these chunks. A section can be defined as visually and logically related contents. They may be of difference sizes.
• Include no more than 7+-2 items in each chunk/section and use "view more" links to link to the section home page.

I don't think this is a universal answer. It depends on the type of websites, users, and contents. Web analytics should reveal more about these.

Homepage design:

• http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020512.html
• http://webstyleguide.com/wsg2/site/home.html
• http://www.addicottweb.com/2009/06/make-your-homepage-content-more-usable/

Web 2.0 User Interface and Interaction

Here I summarize (and envision) some major features of "web 2.0" rich web user interfaces. The question is what features are usually considered to be rich and usable. Let us know if there are things missing.

• Dynamic content changes and animations: auto-fill, marquee, slides, etc.
• Traditional GUI controls and interactions: drop-down/pop-up, expanding/collapsing, selection, highlighting, etc.
• Advanced user interactions using mouse: hold and move, drag and drop, and multi-touch.
• Within page action: to complete a task, especially that with a number of steps, within the same web page: sorting, filling out forms, log in, add new or change content, seeing additional content, etc.

Technologies and tools that can be used to achieve these features:

• Traditional and basic DHTML, JavaScript.
• Client side embedded component: Applet, Flash, Silverlight.
• Recent AJAX, JavaScript library (JQuery/Prototype).
• Advanced UI language: XUL
• Browser GUI integration

Here are some other good readings:

• http://blog.lab49.com/archives/779
• http://woork.blogspot.com/2009/01/10-beautiful-web-ui-libraries.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Internet_application

Web UI Integration via REST

My previous blog mentioned about web slice, which can be integrated to IE nicely. Now, can such nice web slices be integrated (mashed-up) to web pages? It's easy to do it on the receiving end, through manipulating XHTML DOM dynamically. What's difficult now is the publishing end. I am not aware of any neat way to just get a particular web slice. Maybe webpage scraping does work but not ideal.

Here is my imagination. Can we use REST and do some URL processing to get a particular web slice? For example, assuming there is a web slice with id "bidstatus", the a URL "http://example.com/examplepage/webslice/bidstatus" or "http://example.com/example.aspx@bidstatus" will retrieve that exact web slice. Maybe this is already there but I just don't know.

An analyst's problem

I read this from my student's blog: "as a technical person, stop telling me what you want and tell me what your problem is."

I think it applies more to an (system) analyst. So "as an analyst, stop telling me what you want and tell me what your problem is."

The quote is a bit dramatic but it's got a point, even in my daily life. One day after I wrote that comment - a Sunday morning - my wife complained that she wanted one of those stackable racks back in the kitchen. We did not really use it, and it was crowded there; so I moved it. I showed her the quote, and, she smiled - she's analyst, too; so she understands. It turned out the problem was just she needed a place to put the rice cooker - there were better solutions.