Expert Voices: Peter Morville on Why Information Architecture Matters - ' Next Page'
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: Beyond Usability">
Beyond Usability
You've always concerned yourself with the notion of usability.
Right. But, you know, a few years ago, I began to get a bit tired of the word usability. When I consult with companies, I ask executives what they're looking for in the redesign of their Web site, and without fail they'll say, "Well, we want it to be more usable." And I'll say, "Great, what does that mean?" The word "usability" has grown to be almost the equivalent of "quality."
So for the past few years I've been talking about what I think are some of the other qualities of the user experience. I came up with a user-experience honeycomb that includes other terms as well, such as "useful," "desirable," "findable," "accessible" and "credible" (see "Value on the Web," this page). There are a lot of things beyond usability that we're striving for in designing the user experience.
Your most recent book is called Ambient Findability. Why has findability become so important?
A few years ago, I realized that I felt a little bit trapped inside a box of my own creation: Information architecture can add a lot of value, but findability really cuts across every discipline. People who are designers and developers and engineers and people in marketing all contribute to whether or not a Web site supports findability—that is, enabling people to find what they're looking for easily and quickly.
So findability isn't limited to information architecture. It's not even limited to the Web. And in a world where we have exponential increases in the amount of information that's available, and so much competition in the realm of advertising pushing to get people's attention, I think findability becomes even more important. What we need to do is make sure that when a customer, or a prospective customer, wants to find information about a product, we really enable them to find what they need when they need it. And that's really what findability is all about: looking at all the different ways to make that possible.
Over the past several years, the biggest area of opportunity in improving findability has been in the area of search—whether that's doing search-engine optimization to make sure your site is coming high in the organic, or natural, results of a Google search, or just getting into the click-advertising business. But again, this blends into such areas as marketing and even into the way the products are designed.
There's also a psychological side of information architecture that involves such issues as credibility and authority. How does that affect site design?
Many of us in the information architecture world, myself included, are guilty of talking too much about findability, but, in fact, information architecture is also a very important element in establishing credibility and communicating authority on the Web.
In my presentations, I'll often use
Forrester Research as an example, because they have a really interesting taxonomy for their products, which are technology research reports. That taxonomy—the way they organize and structure what they think of as the set of industries and technologies they follow—communicates a lot about Forrester's vision, and it really helps to establish their authority in these areas. It's not just about helping people find the report they're looking for.
Taxonomy, and especially the way information is structured on the home page, has a really big impact on how people perceive your company, your vision and mission. Even the words you use—whether you decide to use a warm, friendly, kind of down-to-earth language, or focus more on expert vocabulary—affect how people perceive your authority and whether they trust you and feel comfortable with you.
B.J. Fogg's
Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University has led what I consider to be some of the most interesting research into Web design in the past five or six years. They look at which elements of Web design influence people to believe in, and trust, what they're seeing on the Web. In one of their early studies, they learned that users were placing look and feel—visual design—and information architecture very high among the factors that influenced whether they trusted a particular Web site.
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