[Sigia-l] search interface as IA

[Peter Boersma]

Eric Scheid <eric.scheid at ironclad.net.au> wrote:

> 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.

Their search is severely broken:
- Do a search for "safety". It seems the search engine did index all (>30)
slides of a presentation ("In the beginnng there was paper") and the results
of a survey ("Results from Form 1.." including sensitive personal
information) but failed to index the PDF brochure "Patient Centered -
Patient Safe" with the filename "patientsaefetybrochure.pdf".
- In the Classes and Events "destination" I found a reference to a Golf
Tournament. Now, go search for "golf tournament"...

What remains of their IA is also broken:
- select the destination "Medical Library".
What you see on top of the page (after the whitespace and huge flash image)
is something I'd call 6 items of second-level navigation: Mission/Services,
Continuing Medical Education, Medical Staff Office, etc. Below this, on the
right is, what? Third-level navigation? Related links? One is a in-page
link, the others cross-links.
Now select "Physicians". Wow, what just happened? The second-level
navigation is turned upside-down, and there's some real third-level
navigation!
- one more: select "Continuing Medical Education" under "Medical Library".
You'll land on a page with 3 items of third-level navigation (CME Calendar,
Licensure, and Intructional Resources"). Select the first one of those (CME
Calendar) and there's 4 items! Select "Licensure" and there's 5!

And I'm not even going into the change of page titles that occurs all the
time. This site is broken. Badly.

I think this site used to have a hierarchical navigation system, but someone
(probably a vendor, although the "search_categories.pl" sounds like it might
be a programmer) convinced the owners to switch to a "Google style"
interface.
I think the users lost, and I;m not sure about the site's content managers.

> I'm guessing that for their intended audience it's important not to
> overwhelm with a very cluttered interface.

But is is good to do them a disservice?

Peter
--
Peter Boersma - Senior Information Architect - EzGov
Rijnsburgstraat 11 - 1059AT Amsterdam - The Netherlands
t: +31(0)20 7133881 - f: +31(0)20 7133799 - m: +31(0)6 15072747
mailto:peter.boersma at ezgov.com - http://www.ezgov.com