[Sigia-l] Rant about bad IA practice.

[Mark Bardsley]

Haim,

That's a good description of a distinct personal area of a website set aside
for users. However, it is unclear in your email (at least to me) that the
research showed that the personal area should be called "My" instead of
"Your". Could it be that the research was leading in that regard and didn't
even offer the choice of "Your"? It is probably the case that the tests were
not designed to see if users preferred "My" over "Your"...

Good info in any regard.

- Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Turmite
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 9:44 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Rant about bad IA practice.

Stewart,

In some recent tests to develop a new IA we found a very strong
preference for having a "My" section that is distinct from the rest of
the content on the site. Essentially, the mental model includes a
generic area and a personal area.
The generic area includes all information that is not specific to the
user (e.g., about the company, product/service information, etc.)
The personal area contains all the functionality and information
specific to the user (e.g., account numbers, billing info, list of
past services/orders, etc.)
'Generic' content can be made personal by the user 'bringing' it into
the 'My' area, but they are otherwise separate. (This can be something
like a list of bookmarks - "these are the generic articles that I am
interested in keeping handy.")

So while the designer may be having a conversation with the user, the
user may not be communicating back - they may be looking to perform
actions, transactions, or view information...performing My Actions and
acting on My Information.


Now as for Site Indexes, if the site IA and navigation is well
designed - do we need them at all - aren't they redundant? :-)


-Haim