[Sigia-l] The category of "Miscellaneous"

[Christina Wodtke]

Agreed. My usage of google mail has been proof of that. It's painful to try
to find that one email from the guy who said something about....

Esther says it better than I
http://weblog.edventure.com/blog/_archives/2004/4/19/36468.html

BTW, did a search for Esther hoping to find her blog
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=slv2-&ei=UTF-8&p=esther+dyson
Directory was much more useful
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/People/Dyson__Esther/

Consider the numbers-- 1/3 of searches are one word queries, another third
at two words (mostly single concept however, I.e. new york). Humans are not
terribly articulate creatures. Browse is a query formation tool.

And sometimes a human providing a representative set of results works better
than allowing popularity to define the meaning of the term. Sometimes.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donna Maurer" <donna at maadmob.net>
To: "sigia-l" <sigia-l at mail.asis.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 8:34 PM
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] The category of "Miscellaneous"


> 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
>
>
>
>
> ------------
> When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
> *Plain text, please; NO Attachments
>
> Searchable list archive:   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
> ________________________________________
> Sigia-l mailing list -- post to: Sigia-l at asis.org
> Changes to subscription: http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l