I disagree with your assumptions. Mental models are a core level of HOW I want to find something.
Let's take this off the web for a moment. One of the things that DOESN'T work about Fresh Direct is that it is searched based. However when people shop for groceries they are browser based (hunting & foraging). Google can't help you there. So if I want to design a browsing system SEO is actually irrelevant, b/c "engines" are irrelevant from user mental models. -- dave On Jan 3, 2008 4:25 PM, Fred Beecher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thu, 3 Jan 2008 13:12:11, dave malouf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Machines and humans will NEVER have the same complete set of usability > > needs (if you will). > > No, not the same complete set... of course! I'm simply talking about the > task of finding relevant information. > > SEO's sole goal is to index. Human's have many goals when it comes > > to information and thus their mental models for how to deal with that > > information will shift dramatically away from the type of goals that > > are programmed into search engines. > > Yes, humans have many goals about why they want a piece of information and > will consume it in different ways and take different actions based upon > it... but in order to do any of that they have to find it first. > > I would modify your statement to say that SEO's main goal is to get stuff > found. Humans, while we may have larger macro-goals, will inevitably have at > least a micro-goal of "finding relevant information," ESPECIALLY in the > context of the Web. Google's macro-goal is "finding relevant information," > and to do that it does its best to mimic how humans determine relevance: a) > do lots of other humans think it's relevant? b) does it mention the topic > (keyword) a lot? c) does the topic (keyword) appear in places that are > supposed to communicate relevance to humans? And so on... > > F. -- David Malouf http://synapticburn.com/ http://ixda.org/ http://motorola.com/ ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
