[Sigia-l] mixing apples and oranges and tomatoes

[Thomas Vander Wal]

VanTol, Robert wrote:

>Well you could don The White Coat of Professional Respectability and go ask the  users. But luckily for the time and money of your project, you don't have to. Someone else has already done it for you: Grocers. 
>
>When you or anybody goes to your supermarket do you find the Tomatoes in the Fruit section. No
>
Robert,  you are using a physical metaphor for a non-physical 
environment, which will break quickly.  However keeping with this 
metaphor, when you are in a grocery store the tomatoes are in the 
produce section, which encompasses the fruits and the vegetables.  In 
this section the tomatoes are in a line-of-sight to the fruits and 
vegetables.  Many stores have tomatoes near the fruits at the end of the 
vegetable section, I was supprised when a friend of mine pointed this 
out about 15 years ago.  

As fruits and vegetables are one step a properly formed grocery heirachy 
(to produce) it is relatively easy for a user to go up the tree one 
level then back down.

>
>Do you perhaps find a helpful note in the Fruit section saying, "Are you looking for Tomatoes, try the Veggies...". No 
>
>Come to that, you don't find additional Bananas in the Herb section either. 
>
Take a look at Keith Instone's breadcrumbs (linked from 
http://www.asis.org/Conferences/Summit2002/iapapers.html)  presenation 
to see there are great ways of doing this.

All the best,
Thomas

www.vanderwal.net