[Sigia-l] Rant about bad IA practice.

[Mark Bardsley]

Stewart,

Well said. I agree with much of what you write. Further comments below:

'My anything'
- Agreed. We can only hope that "My shopping cart" or whatever does not
become so ubiquitous that users get confused by "Your shopping cart".

'Site Map'
- If it is an index, alpha would be nice. However, many site maps are maps
because they show relationships between pages that are in a sense based on
distance (click numbers, etc.). You still navigate a site so I have no
problem with site maps and think the term might make more sense the slightly
more uppity "index".

'Card Sorting'
- Agreed. Card sorting could be a valuable exercise for rare cases where
there is a lot of content that needs to be categorized, faceted, etc.
perhaps for the first time. One thing to think about in deciding on card
sorts is: could subject experts, especially with library science backgrounds
do a better job than a bunch of users who might not know how to define the
domain terms well? It's all well and good to say that the user's needs
should come first but what if what the user needs is help categorizing
things effectively? (I'm probably sticking my neck out on this...)

'Eye Tracking'
- Agreed


'Web 2.0 and RSS'
- I am not exactly sure why web 2.0 and RSS are lumped together. I do agree
that the user's needs should be addressed as we move (if we do move) toward
more interactive site design (or are you referring just to rss and
"mashups"). If what you are getting at is that we should rename RSS then
sure, I don't think many users know what it stands for or does, except of
course for the user who use it. Now that I think about it though, sites like
Google News use something like RSS (if I'm not mistaken) without mentioning
it and it is intuitive to customize the news interface.

'User Profiles' AKA Personas?
- Agreed. Unless they are based on actual research it is difficult to put
much faith in them.


Mark Bardsley
Information Architect
Lux Group, Inc.