[Sigia-l] The A>B, B>A problem

[Donna Maurer]

It's all very well for everyone to say that this is a no-brainer, that we should just offer 
what the 'user' wants and that we should ask for our money back from the DB admins!

But there are many, many situations where we are stuck with a particular technology 
or solution. There are a lot of content management systems that are centred on a 
simple hierarchy and that's it. There are lots of organisations that can't afford to 
implement the best faceted solution. I also haven't seen the outcome from any 
usability testing showing that faceted browsing implementations are well understood 
by the people using them.

And if you have been involved in user-centred design, you should know that you can't 
ask people directly 'how would you like to view this data'. In most cases, people can't 
articulate how they would like to work, and can't imagine the future well and how they 
would use something. You can observe how they currently work and use that 
information to inform your decisions.

I think that Peter already knows something about facets (if you don't know Peter, it 
might be worth reading what he does know about facets before telling him how to use 
them ;) All he wanted to know was if we already had a way to describe the problem...

I know that it is nice to share, but sometimes it is worth reading the question first ;)

Donna


On 5 Nov 2004 at 15:34, Dwayne King wrote:

> I'm still going to fall back on asking the user how they want to view 
> the data. Having it in a database is all the better, as long as the 
> data is normalized it won't matter how you request it. If it's not, 
> tell your DB admin that you want your money back, w/o being able to 
> request the data by different metadata really defeats the purpose of 
> having a database.
> 
> I know the original question was just to come up with a name for this, 
> but I'm really having a hard time understanding why this is an issue. 
> In the example Billie is pointing out, it is specifically stated that 
> the user has different needs each time they visit, why force them into 
> a model that doesn't fit their needs?
> 
> It's easy to do and make for a better user experience, so why not?
> 
> 
-- 
Donna Maurer
blog: http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/
work: http://steptwo.com.au/
AOL IM: maadmob