[Sigia-l] "Buy your way to the top of the job-seeker pile"

[Thomas Vander Wal]

On 1/20/03 4:52 PM, "Derek R" <derek at derekrogerson.com> wrote:

> 
>>> | What is wrong with information
>>> | being findable?
>> |
>> | Depends on whether what you found
>> | is any good or not.
> 
> 
> Yes, Mr. Hanna, that is right. And to the rest, how many times do we
> have to travel this road? The Web is a *user-driven* medium -- it is not
> 'sedentary:' 

When one understands that the term finding involves a user the above
statement is out of whack. When an item is found it takes a user to find it.
Often the user is seeking what is found.  User come across a lot of garbage
or chaff that is not what they are looking for and in the midst of that pile
my be what they are hoping to find.

Finding has a connotation of value.  The garbage and chaff that clouds and
hinders the users ability to get that which they seek.  A user that searches
for growing roses, but only puts in the single term rose will get Jalen
Rose, Pete Rose, rose blush, the past tense of the verb rise, and
information about rose bushes and rose trees.  The user would not consider
information on Jalen Rose as having found anything (unless they also had an
interest in the Indiana Pacers or Jalen Rose).  Using the single term rose
will have a low findability for what the user is seeking.

Findability is all about the user and what the user is trying to find.
Findability is an easy to grasp concept for many, if it is not for some
people then don't use it.  Many IAs have found findability is easy for their
clients to understand and want to know how to increase findability. This
quickly leads to explaining metadata, taxonomy, visual layout, improved
search, and better information structure.

Most clients are interested in having the information and content they made
available get found by those that are seeking the information.  Attracting
those that are not interested is not what they want (Getting eyeballs is a
dead concept, thankfully).  The interest of findability is to help not only
the creator of the information, but also the users that are trying to find
the information. 

If findability does not work for you, fine.  The is a high probability that
if you understand findability and its relationship to the user findability
will be a great asset to your customer.

All the best,
Thomas

-- 
www.vanderwal.net

The future is mine, not Microsoft's