Chris Radcliffe

A New Model for Enterprise Information Architecture Design

Looks like Lou has updated his Enterprise IA Roadmap!

This is very exciting as it gives me some more time to procrastinate on developing an integrated model or approach for designing enterprise info architectures that includes concepts from the IA Roadmap, Sharepoint IA components and the Zachman Framework ...

On a related note, I'm also going to address the concept of 'information management maturity' in the model - I started to write some ideas down that related to some recent experiences I've had personally and also related to some past intranet information design work. After some rough editing, I decided to google the topic and came across a pretty insightful article about Information Lifecycle Management Maturity by the good people at StorageTek. Looks like I can't take credit for this concept afterall...

These concepts are very good food for thought though if you are attempting to take on any enterprise information design project...

Forget Banner Blindness - Users are Blinded by Underlined Links

I certainly haven't conducted enough usability testing to be bold enough to say "underlined links are bad" - but I have seen a growing trend in our testing that makes me challenge the application of underlined links...

I think most would agree that the most important component of the interaction a user has on a page is their ability to identify links. We've come a long way from the classic red, blue and green - but I've found lately in testing that most users scan the page for their trigger words that identify a possible navigation route and they then look for the closest actionable link.

A trend I've noticed is that users are not impacted when links are not underlined, provided there is still some differientation or perceived affordance through colour, bolding or symbols to give them a hint that there is a link.

What bothers me most about underlining links is the fact that its often completely unnecessary and can actually negatively impact usability. Take a sidebar or left hand navigation - most users know instantly because of its relative location on the page that it is a site navigation area. Underlining sidebar or left-nav links only adds more clutter to the page, especially when you indent the navigation to illustrate sub-levels.

What's even worse is when links wrap multiple lines - in these scenarios I've seen testers completely miss trigger words that are in the middle of the link because they are blinded by the underline!

If you know of any research out there that speaks to the effectiveness of readability with underlined text, please let me know!

Google adds Personalization, but still no RSS ...?

Looks like Google still isn't providing an RSS or Atom feed for their News - very frustrating, but not surprising...

On a related note, Google has just released a new beta personalized service for their homepage - looks like they are heading towards more of a Yahoo approach which may frustrate a huge percentage of people that preferred their classic search interface...

My new RSS News reader - Feedreader

After spending some time looking around and trying out different RSS Newsreaders, I've finally found a good one that I think I'll spend some on (until MS unleashes their new version of IE 7.0 with RSS built into the browser)...

The reader is called Feedreader v2.9 and is available free.

New Developments in Search - Guided Search (the new face of Faceted Classification)

It's great to see how assisted or guided search is entering into the mainstream attention of designers and developers not only on the web using tools like Endeca Search, but also in operating system design (see Apple shots below).

For those that aren't familiar with the concept, assisted or guided search is similar to faceted classification where the search interface displays a number of categories that your search results display in. Upon entering search terms, the result list is built and populated into predefined categories that are deemed desirable to the user.

Many companies are using this method of navigation as a secondary means of supporting way-finding through an enhanced search, such as MEC:

Others, like Shopping.com use tools like Endeca search to power their primary navigation experience for their users:

Within the operating system race, you'll see Apple has introduced the 'spotlight' search, Quick Search and Full Search into the OS - read on to see some screenshots...