Introduction to
Findability
Cyril Doussin, 28/05/08

Ambient Findability
Peter Morville
http://semanticstudios.com/

“Find”
• discover or perceive by chance or unexpectedly
• discover after a deliberate search
• succeed in obtaining

“Find”
• what is exposed to us (on purpose or inadvertently)
• after searching

Searching for...
physical items

Searching for...
Knowledge
• about oneself
• about concepts (meaning of...)
• detailed information (eg. product)
• entities in the same society (people,
businesses, organisations etc.)

Searching for...
Opinions
• to validate feelings or judgments
• to establish trust relationships
• complementary judgments

Searching for
information
• physical • knowledge
• conceptual • judgments
• social

Information
• Data: a string of identified but unevaluated
symbols
• Information: evaluated, validated or useful data
• Knowledge: information in the context of
understanding
Information closely tied to communication

Memes
Pieces of information transmitted from one
mind to another
what viral marketing is
trying to achieve

Multi-Agent Systems
Systems composed of interacting intelligent agents.
• reactive agents
• cognitive agents
Interesting base to study collective behaviour &
communication patterns.

Findability
“Findability refers to the quality of
being locatable or navigable.”

Findability: item level
evaluate to what degree a particular object is
easy to discover or locate

Findability: system level
how well a physical or digital environment
supports navigation and retrieval

Wayfinding
• Knowing where you are
• Knowing your destination
• Following the best route
• Being able to recognise your destination
• Finding your way back
Directional Sense by Jan Carpman and Myron Grant. Evans & Co. (2006)

How to make
something findable?
• make sure the item is easy to discover or
locate
• have a well-organised system which
supports easy navigation and retrieval

“In Your Face”
Discovery Principle
Expose the item in places known to be
frequented by the target audience

Hand-guided navigation
• sorting/ordering
• sign-posting

Describe & browse
• similar to asking for directions
• similar to asking random questions
• get list of entry-points to pages

Mixing things up

Recommendations
• describe intent
• casual discussions
• advice
• past-experiences
= communication between peers

Web = Referral system
• Anyone can add signs to entry-doors on
your site
• need for relevancy system
• search engines: PageRank
• peer based: Digg

Relevance
• Precision: how well a system retrieves only
relevant documents
• Recall: how well a system retrieves all
relevant documents
Precision = Number relevant & retrieved /
Total number retrieved
Recall = Number relevant & retrieved /
Total number relevant

Relevance
Need to identify the type of search
• Sample search: small set of documents
Precision
are sufficient
• Existence search: search for a specific
document
• Exhaustive search: full set of
Recall
documents needed

Content Organisation
• Taxonomy: organisation through labeling
• Ontology: taxonomy + inference rules
• Folksonomy: adding a social dimension
• Increasingly important as the volume of
information grows and information is
shared
• Very good base for search engines.

Measuring Findability
on the Web
• count number of steps
• many ways to get to your data
• search engines predominant
• peer-based lists and directories important

Recommendations
• Aim to strike a balance between sources
• Know the path your audience will follow
• Understand type of search
• Make advertising relevant
• Make your content rich & relevant
• Make your content structured

The End
Thank you!