[Sigia-l] IA myths: conceptual model of navigation - was: mixing applesand oranges and tomatoes

[Stewart, Erin [NEA]]

Let's go ahead and challenge the myth!

I agree absolutely with PeterV; and thank him for articulating so well what's been in my head (if I'm interpreting his comments correctly).  I have felt very lonely after describing this position to several peers -- probably because it discounts the significance of "taxonomy" creation by IAs, which is one of the few customary IA tasks that a client/boss can get their heads around and consequently pay for.

As a user, I have "muscle memory" about where to click on a page (e.g., which portlet or tile) to accomplish certain actions or find certain info, but this doesn't translate to a "conceptual model of navigation" at all.  Similarly, the convention of left-hand taxonomy doesn't help the user navigate per se - it only helps us (sometimes) discover and recall the availability of content and it's granularity.

If the content objects are tagged with the correct metadata elements and values, they should self-organize by facet or be readily re-organizable by an IA's pre-definition of boolean queries for presentation.  Navigation, then, becomes a matter of designing appealing visual cues to guide the user experience in meeting specific objectives (buy this book, find this fact).  If that is true, then navigation paths and "site structure" aren't even necessarily related.

I'm prepared for a firestorm but find most of the discussions on this list to be very informative.

Erin Stewart

-----Original Message-----
From: PeterV [mailto:peter at poorbuthappy.com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 6:22 PM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] IA myths: conceptual model of navigation - was:
mixing applesand oranges and tomatoes


At 01:30 PM 4/11/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>  so the user becomes unable to build a conceptual model of the site over 
> time.

Which to me seem one of the great myths of IA: this whole 
building-a-conceptual-model-of-the-navigation business.

I've never seen much evidence that users build a conceptual model of a 
site's *navigational system*. What they seem to do is to remember the path 
(in the form of remembering links and where they are on the page) they took 
to a certain destination, and repeat that path. They do have a conceptual 
model of *how things work*, but for me that isn't directly related to 
navigation paths. It seems more related to general attributes, like "This 
is a site where you can find reliable reviews", or "The news here is always 
interesting".

There are of course the "left hand links are navigation" and "top right 
corner is home" thingies, but I'd call those conventions, not conceptual 
models. Any insights to share on this?
PeterV
http://petervandijck.net


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