[Sigia-l] search interface as IA

[Eric Reiss]

I can’t say I’m as impressed by this site as my namesake from Sydney.
Sarasota Memorial Hospital didn’t really do away with the main
navigation, it just hid the choices in a dropdown menu. But I approve
of using Search as a main feature on a site like this and the design
is wonderfully clean.

There are, however, a couple of dumb usability problems, among others
that the category “Health information” is only available from the
main page. Slightly more worrisome is that while a search for
“cancer” leads to lots of pages, a search for a more specific
disease, such as “Non-Hodgkin’s” comes up with no matches. That’s
because the engine isn’t indexing the subscription content under
“Health information” – not good if the search engine is a key part of
the navigation scheme.

The labels are not always optimal, sometimes requiring insider
knowledge on the part of the visitor. Also, Sarasota should probably
also talk to Pat Lynch at the Yale Medical Center, who discovered
that a label like “Find a Physician” is a turn-off to non-academics
who just want to “Find a Doctor.”

The “Find a Physician” section has another problem – it comes back
with a 404 error if you search via keywords. Probably just a minor
glitch. But
the interface requires users to know what type of
specialist they need.

For example, if you’ve developed a facial palsey, such as Bell’s, how
would you know to search for an otolaryngologist? I don’t think most
lay people would know this. And if they learn this through their
primary care physician, they’ll probably also get a specific referral
to a specialist – which makes the Sarasota site somewhat superfluous.

Finally, this site plays elevator music on the front page – which I
cannot abide. But it certainly conjured up associations of waiting
rooms. All part of building the user experience, I guess


Just my 2 cents. If Sarasota wants more, it’ll start to get
expensive:)

Cheers,
Eric

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eric reiss
principal
e-reiss aps
copenhagen, denmark
http://www.e-reiss.com
office: (+45) 39 29 67 77
mobile: (+45) 20 12 88 44

e-reiss is an official sponsor of the
Usability Professionals' Association
http://www.upassoc.org

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