[Sigia-l] inviting, welcoming, open, approachable?

[Will Parker]

On Mar 30, 2007, at 10:22 AM, Peter Morville wrote:
> If I had room for one more facet in my UX honeycomb [1], I'd fill  
> it with
> learnable :-)
>
> [1]
> http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/images/ 
> honeycombbig.jpg
>

Your diagram is a good honeycomb and a good faceting of the given  
topics, but perhaps you (_particularly_ you as part of the IA  
aristrocracy ) should investigate Penrose's aperiodic tiles instead  
of those boring old regular Euclidean shapes.

There are many geometries, and finding the right one for the subject  
matter is part of an IA's toolbox. Sometimes Euclid's shapes just  
aren't the best mapping. };->

Wikipedia's description of Penrose's work is clear (http:// 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling) , and the following page gives  
a quick visual and mathematical intro ( http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/ 
symmetry/penrose.htm ). If you have access to back issues of  
Scientific American magazine, look up the January '77 issue for  
Penrose's own intro to the subject.

If you're considering additional candidates for your diagram, also  
consider:

	'mappable' -- the set of properties of a design that allows users
	to construct a _usable_ mental model of how the whole product works.

Whether the user truly understands what's going on (e.g. "It's all  
ball-bearings these days") is irrelevant if their map of how to  
navigate and use the product corresponds to how it _actually_ works.  
We need to instill the right story to guide user behavior, and in  
this case, a myth is as good as a manual.

BTW, this is a sub-facet of 'learnable', BTW, so Penrose's 'kite and  
dart' tiling would make the relationship easy to map.

  - Will

Will Parker
wparker at ChannelingDesign.com

"The only people who value your specialist knowledge are the ones who  
already have it." - William Tozier


> -----Original Message-----
> On Mar 30, 2007, Will Parker wrote:
>
> On Mar 30, 2007, at 12:24 AM, Eric Scheid wrote:
>>
>> quoted from:
>>
>>     http://www.communication.org.au/dsblog/?p=30
>>
>>> 4. The term accessible covers what today's information architects
>>> refer to as 'findability'. But accessible has another implication,
>>> one of inviting people in, being welcoming, open, and  
>>> approachable. I
>>> may be wrong, but I see no reference to these all-important
>>> characteristics in the information architecture toolbag.
>>
>> comments?
>
> Haven't time at the mo' to check the link, but I've settled on the  
> term
> 'learnability' as a vast simplification of 'a design that most  
> users in the
> intended audience will find easy to map to existing mental models of
> something they already know how to do or interact with'.

-