[Sigia-l] is bad design a choice?

[Lyle Kantrovich]

On 10/19/05, Dave Heller <dheller at gmail.com> wrote:
> But since you actually brought IA into the mis on the sigia list, I'll bite.
> Why a taxonomy at all? Talk about a PERFECT! place for folksonomy. I
> don't think that flickr or del.icio.us have this many users. One thing
> that I understand about folksonomy is that the more people using it
> the better it works as it begins to normalize. So, you would think
> that a company w/ all that cash and endery would invest in UI to turn
> the corner a bit, and try to lead the pack. And Folksonomy is just ONE
> of a few ways to improve the findability of their merchant's products.

Dave, I just have to ask how you would manage the change from the
current working, profitable state to your folksonomy (can you say
"management hears a buzzword").  How do you know they're not already
doing this?  ...and of course we've already established that they're
currently leading the "pack"...unless you have another "pack" in mind.
 There are few "brownie points" that matter in business.

> Transparansee is a company tha specializes in fuzzy search engines.
> This would be PERFECT for eBay.

And you've based this free expert advice on the "perfect" solution on
what?  All your already stated non-usage of their current solution? 
And please tell me, as someone who already generally gets way TOO MANY
results when searching on eBay, why "fuzzy" search would help me.  How
will "fuzzy" search help collectors find all the "red" items if the
desicription doesn't include the word red?  How will it help me
eliminate items that look "too worn out" in their photos?  I think
this illustrates that free advice is usually worth what you pay for
it.  :-)

Until we have a good understanding of a company's problem set, it's
ridiculous to sit here and say we have the magic answers for them. 
Better to ask questions, and then listen.  For example "I wonder if
fuzzy search would help eBay..." and then let folks discuss it's
pros/cons and offer what they know about eBay's business and users. 
In the process, we'd learn about fuzzy search and eBay.  You declaring
some next-gen tool "perfect" for them teaches us little or nothing. 
SIGIA should be, and has been, a place to learn and share...it's
annoying when it becomes a place to make declarations.  (Was that just
a declaration?  Damn.)

> To me their problem is more about not trying too hard (yes, Bad
> Design!) than it is about the enormity of their problem. They are
> sitting on their laurels.

And how did you determine they're sitting on their laurels?  Again, as
someone that doesn't use eBay?  Did someone at eBay tell you this? 
I've seen some pretty darn good presentations at conferences from
designers at eBay doing great work to move them forward.  For example,
in one case, they took about, I can't recall exactly, but maybe 10
steps out of their seller registration process...and making the
company more $ in the process...and making sellers much happier.  That
doesn't sound like laurel-sitting to me.

I'm not saying eBay's perfect or that they are improving as fast as
they can...but who am I to say?

--
Lyle

--------------------------
Lyle Kantrovich
Blog: Croc O' Lyle
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com