It also may belie user dissatisfaction with the navigation systems of sites they really want to use, in spite of getting lost or not finding what they may even know is there.
I know for years, on many newspaper and major media source sites like CNN.com or MSNBC, I'd try 3-4 times to find an article I'd read before or saw in print and wanted to forward to someone, only to become so vexed and thwarted by the godawful CMS's and lack of permalinks or ability to search all terms, including author, or article text, that I'd just bug out and go to Google, and inevitably, find the article I couldn't locate on the site from the site itself, to save my soul. What if the real reason people do it is interface frustration? Chris On Jan 28, 2008 3:42 AM, Diarmad McNally <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On 5 Jan 2008, at 07:10, Peter Meyers wrote: > >> In addition, I think it's very important to usability that we start > >> to consider the entire life-cycle of the consumer, from the moment > >> they sit down at the computer. > > Over the last couple of years I've noticed an upward trend among > usability test and ethnographical study participants to use Google > rather than a particular site's navigation, e.g. instead of looking > for Flight Times in the left hand nav of the Virgin Atlantic site, > they prefer to Google "virgin atlantic flight times". This is similar > to the increase in users using Google for navigating to popular > sites rather than typing in the URL or using favourites/bookmarks as > evidenced in the increase of search terms such as Facebook, MySpace etc. > > This behaviour relies on sites having accurate SEO and may indicate > an increasing importance of SEO to provide an acceptable level of > usability. > > > Diarmad McNally > Interaction Design Studio > > UK: +44 (0) 7808 297289 > Irl: + 353 (0) 85 7888 085 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > *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 > ________________________________________________________________ *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
