[Sigia-l] Rant about bad IA practice.

[Peter Van Dijck]

I disagree with about half of this.

"My xx" and "sitemap" are standards. Why fight them? RSS is being made
much more user friendly with the new Firefox and IE - it works. Users
get it, they're not dumb.

Cheers :)
Peter

On 10/26/06, Mark Bardsley <markb at luxworldwide.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
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>
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