Findability and Exploration: the future of search
Stijn Debrouwere, a Belgian information architect, has published a long Peter Morville-inspired post on findability related issues.
“The majority of people visiting a news website don’t care about the front page. They might have reached your site from Google while searching for a very specific topic. They might just be wandering around. Or they’re visiting your site because they’re interested in one specific event that you cover. This is big. It changes the way we should think about news websites.
We need ambient findability. We need smart ways of guiding people towards the content they’d like to see — with categorization and search playing complementary goals. And we need smart ways to keep readers on our site, especially if they’re just following a link from Google or Facebook, by prickling their sense of exploration.
Pete Bell recently opined that search is the enemy of information architecture. That’s too bad, because we’re really going to need great search if we’re to beat Wikipedia at its own game: providing readers with timely information about topics they care about.”
Check also his earlier posts this month:
– Navigation headaches
– We’re in the information business
– The basic unit of information
(via InfoDesign)
