Information-seeking behaviours

Information seeking behaviours

About me
Freelance user experience designer
Information architecture, interaction design, content
Website, intranet, business applications
Design, strategy, mentoring
Workshops & writing
Book: Card sorting: Designing usable categories
http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting/
Mini e-book - web content writing
Rockstar press (soon)
Events: UX Australia
@maadonna

The information-seeking myth Search Browse

Many behaviours
Known item finding
Exploring
Refining & narrowing
Comparing & selecting
Getting just an overview
Getting lots of detail
Discovering unknown things
Re-finding

Known-item

Known item finding
You have a clear idea of what you want
You can describe it
You know where to start
You know when you have finished
Eg
Looking for a particular book on Amazon
Looking for a definition of a term
Checking the price of a product you know about
Checking a store has a product

Known item finding
Design solutions
Search
Index (e.g. A-Z)
Browse (as long as the path is short)

Browse – use A-Z example

Exploring

Exploring
You have a fuzzy idea of what you want
You can’t always describe it clearly
You know where to start
You know when you have finished
Eg
Finding out how to make navigation work in wordpress
Learning how our brains learn
Looking for examples of a design solution
Looking for new music

Exploring
Design solutions
Search often doesn’t works as terminology is unknown (though it may be used as a starter)
Browse
Variety of starting points
Related links

There are many different products or items to choose from
User has some criteria
Refine & narrow to make the list of options smaller
Often followed by a compare task
E.g.
You have thought about what’s important in your next car, but are not sure which type to buy
You have ideas for dinner, but not a recipe
You know what you want for your next phone, but have not chosen the brand/model

Design solutions
Filters/choosers
Faceted browse

Comparing

Comparing
Compare similar items
May be within or across sites
Eg
Comparing individual phones from one retailer
Comparing phone plans across providers
Design issues
Need to know what features are important
Allow easy visual comparison
Need a flexible interface to allow appropriate # of products

Filter & compare example
Imagine you want to buy your next mobile phone. What features are important to you?
Sketch two interfaces:
One to narrow down the list of phones
One to lets you compare 3-5 phones.

Getting a broad idea

Someone just wants to get the ‘gist’ of the topic, not know everything about it
E.g.
Main findings from a research project
Why is climate change important
What’s this ‘twitter’ thing everyone’s talking about

Design solutions
Ensure summary material is available, linking to detailed
Allow skimming & scanning
Write in a simple, easy to digest way
Use diagrams & case studies to give a broad view
Include snapshots, ‘at-a-glance’

Sometimes people start out with something in mind, but there is more than they know about
You know there is more than the user expects
Known item and exploratory tasks
Design solutions
Suggestions (eg amazon)
Guided learning
Related information
Simple in-context links

Refinding

Refinding
Finding things you’ve seen before
Design solutions
Services that only do this
Explicit: sign in and explicitly save
Implicit: sign in and implicitly save
Implicit: save without sign in (see if ebay & amazon do this without being signed in)

“ I’m not searching as much as I used to be, but I’m finding more”

So what?

So what?
Use your user research to see what people need to do
Known item finding
Exploring
Comparing & selecting
Getting just an overview
Getting lots of detail
Re-finding
Design approaches for each behaviour

Questions & thanks
http://maadmob.com.au/
+61 (0)409-778-693
[email_address]
Twitter etc: maadonna

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Information-seeking behaviours

by Donna Spencer on Oct 07, 2009

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