David, I've been watching my wife and son struggle while learning to use Adobe products, searching through help and online using their own words or descriptions for what they think they want to do, knowing the answers are locked up somewhere in a vault they can't identify. Eventually, they may stumble upon "Object / Live Trace / Make and Expand" or "Layer / Create clipping mask", but probably they won't. My wife was working in Photoshop the other day when I came home, looking frustrated after trying to figure out how to get her image back after saving it in another format and size, having Googled all up one side and down the other. That one was gone, but I showed her "Save for the Web" and she was good for the next time. Why didn't she consider that choice in the first place? Because she was trying to "Save for the Book".
Because Adobe products form a strange parallel universe all their own, with Terms Not Found In Nature, it's hard to know what to look for unless you already know what it is you're looking for. I'm not sure if search on the Adobe website will solve that problem. But please, somewhere in your decision process, take some time to watch novices struggle to learn your products, and do your best to help them succeed. Thanks, Michael Micheletti On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 4:10 PM, David Hatch <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi all, > > For the past several months I have been perseverating on the concept of > creating a search-dominant wayfinding system for my web site: Adobe.com. > Why, you may ask? My thought (and I know Jared, at minimum will disagree > after having just listened to a recent podcast from him on this) is that as > web users we are moving more and more in that direction - toward search as > being a standard, hard-wired, lizard brain reflex when confronted with > moving through the vasty content spaces that are out there. The Googles > have > had no small impact on our wayfinding approaches. > > *Meme check: search as last resort?* > I wanted to call out and question a particular meme, namely: ³search on > sites like adobe.com is a function of last resort for those poor folks who > aren¹t finding their trigger words in the page (nav or content). I know > there is research on this so please hit me with it as necessary. But I > can¹t > help thinking that you could phrase a new approch like this: ³People search > first because that¹s how they are used to finding info². What do you think? > > *Why a search dominant wayfinding mode?* > Any attempt on our part (UXers) to come up with appropriate linked words or > images to use as nav in the hopes of getting users where we think they want > to go is only a guess. Sometimes our guesses at nav are great but sometimes > they totally fail. What we do know is that in every user's mind is an > intent > as they move through a web site. If we let that user type their intent into > a search box then that is a step closer to (and more feasible than) > creating > the mind reading UI we all know would be best for users. Of course the next > thing is: are the search results useful? But lets assume they were. Why in > that case would we not want to create a search dominant wayfinding UI for > folks. > > *What would a search dominant wayfinding UI look like for a site that's not > Google?* > It would probably have a very prominent search field. One of those giant > novelty size web 2.0 style things perhaps. For a site like adobe.com it > would probably also have some standard links such as "products" and > "support", etc but those would not be the main focus. Perhaps search could > even be used to generate the local navigation on subsections. Perhaps the > search input field could be integrated into the page such that it could > also > act as a page title (an example is here http://bit.ly/o81Vp, although > admittedly its a results page). An extreme example of a search only UI on > the homepage is here: http://www.sequoiacap.com/. > > Question: what are you thoughts on developing a search dominant wayfinding > paradigm for a corporate site. I'd like to hear what you think. > > Thanks, > David Hatch > > > > > > > > > > > ________________________________________________________________ > 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 > -- Michael Micheletti [email protected] ________________________________________________________________ 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
