[Sigia-l] mixing apples and oranges and tomatoes

[Julie Francis]

Katherine,
If you think about a marriage between the users' and company's goals:
- (user) to find information (or a product) that is relevant, desired,
needed, whatever
- (company) to put in the hands of their customers (or target customers) the
information/product they need/want/desire so the customer ultimately spends
money

...then it seems to me that the best solution is to put the information in
both places.

Why?  It best meets both the user's and the company's goals.  To put it in
one place risks the end-user not finding what he/she is looking for.  And
that ultimately hurts the company.

I've seen Usabilty testing where customers looked for power drills under
"hand tools."  The *next* department in the listing was power tools, which
is of course where the power drills logically belong (or at least where we
find them in brick and mortar hardware stores).  Why did end-users look
under hand-tools?  Because they reasoned "I use my hands to use a power
drill, so I should be able to find it under hand-tools."  And when they
didn't find their power drills under hand tools (instead they found hammers,
screwdrivers, etc.) some found them under Power Tools.  But not everyone --
others got frustrated, assumed the site (stupid site!) didn't sell power
drills, and gave up.  Fascinating. Disturbing.

So what did we learn?  Well, if we're in the business to sell tools and make
gobs of money doing it, we better put the power drills where they logically
belong to end-users, not only where they logically belong to us -- so in
both places.  All the end-users care about is finding their product (or
info); and in my experience they don't give a flip *where* it is (in terms
of hierarchy) as long as they can find it.  In my experience, end-users
don't really care *where* they are as long as they are always getting one
step closer to their goals.

I'm personally not crazy about your solution of "if you are looking for ___,
look here."  I worry it will be irritating to end-users, because you've
basically just told them "Yo, you are looking in the wrong place," and I
would worry that it would make them feel stupid.  (and too many online users
feel stupid, and this is never good for business)  I think it would offer a
much better online experience if you just included the "tomatoes" in both
places.  But why not test both solutions with end-users?

And BTW, it seems to me that we're forgetting that Katherine's posting isn't
really about tomatoes.  Right?

I've always been fascinated that tomatoes are really fruits. And now I learn
that strawberries aren't? Trippy!

Best Regards,
Julie Francis
Online User Experience Design
* Usability * Customer-Driven Interface Design *

> -----Original Message-----
 Katherine Lumb
> I'm redesigning a corporate website, and I'm running into some
> conceptual roadblocks with my client.
>
> Here's the problem: let's say, hypothetically, that my client
> publishes information about food on their website. They have the
> following categories in their global left hand nav: "Fruits",
> "Vegetables", "Meats" and "Beverages". I want to put "Tomatoes"
> as a second level item under "Vegetables." I recognize that some
> folks might come looking for tomatoes under "Fruits," so I
> suggest putting a prominent link on the Fruits landing page that
> says "If you're looking for information on Tomatoes, visit our
> Vegetables section."
>