[Sigia-l] The 3 Factors of I/A

[Peter Merholz]

> On the web, however, (and on these mailing lists) i've seen a lot of
> examples and disscusion about grouping based on Content Similarity and not
> much based on grouping by User Task and I wondered if anyone else was
> doing some User Task driven work?

Over here. 

In our work and in our teaching, we (Adaptive Path) discuss deriving a
(top-down) information architecture from user tasks. We've done it, and
talked about it, with respect to the work we did for PeopleSoft.com:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/002889.php

We researched how people approached the task of buying enterprise software,
developed a mental model based on it, and build the site architecture to
reflect that. To be sure, the architecture wasn't a direct mapping -- some
things didn't make sense to present in such a way. But even where we
strayed, the task-orientation played a strong role throughout the
architecture in how we related pieces of information and made them
accessible to the visitor.

I would take what others have suggested in this thread, and suggest that
"content similarity" is meaningful only to the extent that it meets users'
expectations in accomplishing their tasks. And, so, it's still, in some
regard, a "task-based" approach.

When I've presented this task orientation, I've occasionally been rebuffed
by those who find it too constraining, and these folks have a point. If
there are too many tasks that could be managed in your system, trying to
design solutions for those tasks could be overwhelming and confusing.

But, given a small enough set of tasks, the task-based approach can work
wonders. I find it interesting that we're seeing tasks be explicit in
software design. For the longest time, software was very task-agnostic --
it's just a tool with innumerable features that you can fiddle with. I mean,
how can a word processor know what task you're trying to accomplish?

But, of late, task-dominant software is emerging, the best example of which
I can think of being iPhoto from Apple. At the bottom of iPhoto is a button
bar, with  "Import", "Organize", "Edit", "Book". Each of these being steps
you would take to act on your photos. There's no palette of icons
representing tools which you apply, as there is in PhotoShop or something.
Just a simple series of buttons to push.

On a whole other tack, something else worth addressing is (sorry) faceted
classification, and how it can help here. For sites that are meant to meet
innumerable tasks, facets can allow users to remain task focused, by
utilizing facets in a sequence that is task-like. Prof Marti Hearst has
talked about this with respect to her work on Flamenco, and gave some
examples with regard to recipes. A task could be "I want to make a summer
pasta", and if you have "season" and "ingredient" facets, the user can
cobble those together to meet the task need. Or, "I've got a chicken and
it's dinner time. What can I make?" can be addressed by a "ingredient" and
"mealtime" facets.

--peter