[Sigia-l] "General" as a category

[Donna Maurer]

On 17 Jun 2004 at 10:00, Dave Collins wrote:

> This gets at exactly my point. (I'm not refuting the empirical evidence
> of your tests, I'm just not sure thev're gotten at *why* or *how* it's
> working.)
> 
> Certainly, the *category* describes what's *in it* just fine. But for
> users, that is missing the point. Their task is exactly opposite. They
> know the *resource* they want, they just don't know *where* to find it.
> What about 'resource Q' leads them to look in the General section for
> it?
> 
This was my point though. The users did know where to find the resource that 
answered their question and the 'general' category was the right place.

This was a system for frontline staff, not the public. They are asked a lot of types of 
questions. Some are detailed questions and some are general questions. So in this 
case the documents with the answers to the 'general' questions were in the 'general' 
category and all was fine.

I would have normally said that 'general' was a poor top level category. But for this 
information domain and set of users, it was a very good category. Possibly even a 
basic level category for this context...

Donna
-- 
Donna Maurer
blog: http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/
work: http://steptwo.com.au/
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