[Sigia-l] The category of "Miscellaneous"

[Donna Maurer]

This blanket statement depends on context as well.  The world isn't 
broken up into two types of people. If anything, it is broken into two 
types of task. Some sites and tasks suit known item finding where 
searching is an appropriate method, some suit unknown item finding where 
browsing is an appropriate method.  I'd be silly to browse to a book 
that I know the title of on Amazon, and silly to do a keyword search for 
a French chocolate cake recipe on epicurious. In many cases, a 
combination of approach is appropriate.

This isn't just the information architect in me. I have seen this in 
user research and usability testing as well...It is actually something 
that you need to be very careful with in usability testing. The act of 
writing out a scenario can change it into a known-item find instead of 
an unknown, and people may search rather than their more natural browse. 
But that's another story...

donna

Richard Wiggins wrote:

> You won't find anyone on the planet who is a bigger proponent of 
> manually-crafted search result sets (a.k.a. Best Bets) but it is a
> fact that the world is divided into two parts:
>
> 1) Those who browse by default
>
> and
>
> 2) Those who search by default
>
> Even if you deliver THE right hit as the first item in the hit list,
> people in category 1) will complain that they had to (gasp!) type in a
> search to find what they were looking for.
>
> That doesn't disqualify the solution; just be aware that browse-only
> people will kvetch.
>
> /rich
>  
>
-- 

Donna Maurer
e: donna at maadmob.net
blog: http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/
AIM: maadmob