[Sigia-l] mixing apples and oranges and tomatoes

[James Melzer]

[wandering further away from the topic]

My grocery store commingles the fruits and vegetables in a way that is
pleasing to the eye, but has very little to do with the biology of the
plants.  The store is so huge that the owners actually added a booth with
a person in it to help people find things.  They had recently reorganized
the store, and I guess they felt they needed to explain it to people. The
person in the booth had a map of the store, and what amounts to a search
engine. Interestingly, they also had a scanner and a scale to check prices
on products.  There was also a self-serve scanner for people who did not
feel like waiting (there was often a line to talk to this person).  For
people who really know what they are doing, the store also added checkout
lines where the customer rings up their own cart. Can we call these
grocery store power users? So navigating the grocery store is perhaps not
so mundane or clear cut a task as we might like. 

To answer the specific question of tomatoes, I would say put them in both
fruits and vegetables. Users will look in both equally, and it is easy
enough to track their path through the site and maintain some form of
context regardless of how they navigated to the Tomato page. This kind of
user info is also nice for tracking how your users work with the info and
conceive of the categories. Also, you might find it useful to generalize
this for all the other foods that really belong in several categories. 

Or (heck) just move to a faceted classification scheme wherein 'tomato' is
a fruit, a veggie, a salad item, a kind of sauce, and a sandwich
fixin'.  Presumably, the users will want to know different things in each
context, so you might as well establish that context right up front. Maybe
the context is pesticides, or slicing knives, in which case fruitiness or
vegginess is mostly irrelevant. Plus using a faceted scheme would make all
us LIS folk happy.

James Melzer

jmelzer at umd.edu
http://info.umd.edu/~jmelzer



On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Betsy Vera wrote:

> On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Cunliffe D J (Comp) wrote:
> 
> > I think supermarkets are actually a really nice (but not necessarily good)
> > example of IA in practice.
> 
> Agreed, for the most part, but the exceptions can make shopping
> frustrating (until you figure out your local store's quirks). For
> instance, at my old local store, the store-brand grated Parmesan is kept
> next to the dry pasta.  However, the name-brand grated Parmesan is kept at
> the other end of the store, next to the peanuts and beer. The fancy
> name-brand grated Parmesan is kept in the refrigerated section, close to
> the regular cheese.
> 
> I understand that shelving decisions are made based on who pays more for
> prime shelf space, but as a customer I'd prefer all the grated Parmesans
> to be together. When I feel myself being manipulated to choose one
> specific variety or brand by making it inconvenient to find the others, I
> become ornery and make a point of tracking down the product *I* want to
> buy.
> 
> Maybe supermarkets need to come with search engines. I've seen some that
> have an index of sorts: a list of most common items, and their aisle
> locations, attached to the front of the shopping cart. It's a start, I
> guess.
> 
> 
>  Betsy Vera - bentley at umich.edu - http://www.BetsyDa.com/bedlam.html
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> 
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