[Sigia-l] search interface as IA

[Jeff White]

This is really interesting - I work at a healthcare company, and we're
launching a redesigned site in a few days.  The original poster was right on
about the audience (at least, our audience), and minimizing clutter and
confusion - we went from a site with nearly 200 links on the home page
alone, to less than 12 in the redesign.  Typically, the sites we compete
against have a wealth of information, but they rarely pay attention to good
design, and usually end up with messes like i referenced above.  Our
audience are typical healthcare workers - busy, stressed, and very task
focused - seems like an effective search for navigation for these audiences
should be effective.  They are short on time, don't like too many choices,
know what they want, and also know the right lingo to get them
there.....perfect for search.

JW

> Quick, go take a look at the http://www.smh.com/ website ... they've
> almost
> completely done away with having a "main navigation" conceptual
framework.
> You access their entire website content via a search interface. I say
> "almost" because you'll also see a popup menu of "destinations", which
map
> closely to what would have been their top level navigation. The
advantage
> to
> using a pop up menu is that they can have longer titles for each
choice,
> whereas if they were spatially placed buttons in a main navigation
button
> grid they'd be very very cramped.

What I like is that it's the complete opposite of what Jared Spool
writes at http://www.uie.com/articles/search_stinks/ - "we suggest that
designers seriously consider not including a search engine on their
sites until the technology is equal to the challenge. In the meantime,
our testing data suggests that designers would have more success by
focusing instead on creating effective links".

Of course, this article was written in 1997, which is 45 dog years ago.