yahoo! vs. google is a very cool visualization tool to compare results. I think the addition of numbers or a bit of instruction would have been helpful, but once you get the concept, it's sweet.
the two rows of dots represent websites in load order, left=#1. So you can easily spot divergence.
here you can see a search for "information architecture" in which a webmonkey index page on design topics is #1 at google, while Yahoo's #1 is jesse's IA resources page. However, I wonder how accurate this is, since when I do the search a second time on google straight, the #1 is argus, then the webmonkey tutorial on IA, while yahoo shows jjg then argus. Maybe slow on the updates?
Still cool visualization idea.
For a breif time, you can compare the new Yahoo! Autos to the old .
gray tuesday is a good cool thing to do. I feel myself already there.
Reading The Oversimplification of Mark Hurst, I'm not sure Peter particularly disagreed with any of Mark's key points. And of course it's oversimplification, it's
a) a blog
b) a guru pronouncement
both notorious for going for the pithy over the compete.
Did mark actually cause any harm? I'd say unlikely, certainly not in that post. Navigation is important, but breadcrumbs in their traditional format rarely are seen or used. The recent study on how training user how to use breadcrumbs results in them using them begs the question: who has time to go to every user's house and teach them to use breadcrumbs?
(Okay, if you've got an intranet, this is a woohoo moment for you.)
C'mon now, breadcrumbs are one of the oldest web conventions (as seen in this 1996 Yahoo) so if people aren't using them now, what makes you think that that might change suddenly?
The breadcrumb is visually weaker than the rest of the page, and often easily overlooked. It also is often labeled "you are here" making it informational as opposed to a object for use. It also causes the user to do some mental gymnastics. The user must hold the site structure, however breifly, in their head to use the breadcrumb, which is probably more thinking than most users want to do mid-task.
The breadcrumb is indeed supplementary, and if real estate is precious, it probably can go, as long as it's key purpose-- widening a search among a large set of objects-- is preserved.
What about it's other theoretical purpose, going back? Trust me, users love their back button, and when in one site usability test session I tried to get them to use something other than the back button by saying "what if I took away your backbutton" they threatened to lynch me. Back is the one thing you can pretty much take off your table of worries, as long as you don't mess up the back button.
Alternatives to the breadcrumb include the BBCi solution of combining breadcrumbing into the navigation. "see all X" is another way to get users to widen their choices, and causes no mental strain. I'm sure there are many more.
Regarding goals-- peter is right about a multiplicity of goals on each page, and that is a conversation for another day. I do believe every page has a heirachy of goals, just as there is a hierachy of users and moreover each section of a page has its own goal-- this is the place for answers, this is the place to get more answers, if this answer didn't suit you, this is the place where you refine your search for answers.... I will have to save this for anotherr day.
it's about pushing the cognitive work off the user and onto the designer. we cannot rely on simple solutions.
Reading Good Experience - The Page Paradigm
"Users don't much care "where they are" in the website. So-called "breadcrumb links," which show the user the exact hierarchy of the website as they click further down, are a nice but mostly irrelevant technology. It's not that users don't understand the links; it's that they don't care.
Let me say it again, Max Bialystock-style:
USERS DON'T CARE WHERE THEY ARE IN THE WEBSITE. "
no, they really don't. They don't care at all. They care where they are going. They care to know if they are there yet. they care about where they wish to go next. where they are in the grand scheme of things is entirely a cause for concern of the people who know a bit too much. User researchers who ask in usability testing "do you know where you are" then report worriedly that the user doesn't are every bit as deluded as the design weenies who obsess over it. The user, meanwhile is unworried about where they are: they are sitting on a chair facing a computer, that offers a address bar to a search engine if at any point they can't think where to go next.
Breadcrumbs, if noticed, are mostly good for navigating to a wider selection of stuff. Knowing that, is the classic breadcrumb design really the most effective way to offer that functionality?
I'm kinda Ms. Super-biased on account of I used to work on Yahoo Search, and I still manage the team that does and I'm a blogger who is into rss and I've never found a rss read I really loved and I think"my yahoo" is a fine substitute, but anyhow, biased as I am, i think this is darn nifty.
You get to judge for yourself.
How saturday it all is. I'm on the couch, anti-ergo, and nick stellino is asking how to make shrimp happy. i don't know, but I'll guess it does not involve frying them in a cast iron skillet.
Erin and I were having dinner and talking B&A and we realized with Ryan's retirement into the peace-and-quiet of occasional copyediting, it's an almost all-girl crew over at B&A, with me as publisher, her as chief editor, and Brenda, Dorelle and Liz editing. Not to mention Jen, Emily and Laura copy-editing. Only brave Kirk, our stalwart technie who champions proper mark-up (coming in the new couple weeks-- watch the code) represents the Y gene. I have no idea if it means anything. boys, girls, gurus, writers, humans... so what. but I like to think about it anyhow.
So erin and I are planning the next generation of B&A and are open to wishlists. What would you like to see next?
In the line for the DMV all society
laid low, class flat, life didn't prepare you
for this. The mexicans dress warmly
wait patiently, one line more for them, this line
that stretches out the door into the cold
lightly raining concrete outside, they stand
legs asplay weight evenly placed, arms folded
calm, peaceful, stoic, but you, the professor,
the manager, the soccer mom you had an
appointment, but not an umbrella how
could this happen, why do you need
to take a number?
!
Yet the line has you now, you
can't return to the comfort of the SUV the
volvo the BMW you are stripped of your class
and retreat into into your cellphone until
all calls used up, hop
from foot to foot to keep warm, hoping the
next sucker with an appointment will come
you call to them it won't work while hoping they
will find the hidden passage in and you can follow,
you eye enviously the reader of the zane gray,
the woman balancing her checkbook, then
resign yourself to reacquainting yourself with
your thoughts.
Google - Yahoo Comparison: Compare Search Results
looks like it to me.
So Zap sends me this wonderful Rich Gold talk The Coast Guard and its Borders and tells me to read it. And I do. And I find this gem (as well as many others)
"I had gone to a college with both an art school and a design school. And the artists and designers always sat at separate tables and didn't like each other much. These guys had sold out according to these guys and these guys were kind of flaky and didn't really want to make a living according to those guys.
And the way I think about it, the difference between the art and the design is that an artist paints a painting, and he goes, "Oh, it's beautiful. It's me. It expresses myself. There I am. There's my vision." A designer paints a painting and in the end, turns it around and asks: "Do you like it? No? I'll change it." "
Zap actually sent me the second part of the quote, but I wanted to include the first part, but there exists this art/design cultural uneasiness in schools, and later we pay for it no matter what side were on. As artists we are taught arrogance and starvation mentality, as designers we are taught to be pliant to the power of the buck. And we constantly suspect the other side might be having a better time of it, but we don't dare cross because we are holding on to our dream/sense what-have-you.
As designers we ought to be strong but not arrogant, and be willing to do the right thing isince we are here to help our clients, and "help" and "obey" are not synonyms; and as artists we need to stop being bellybutton gazing sycophants and say something some one can hear.
Last night, as I arrived home weary and dejected, I spyed a strange package form my publisher. I opened it and got a tremendous surprise: Информационная архитектура: чертежи для сайта. Пер. с англ. My book in russian. I keep saying "this is so cool" over and over again-- I can't tell you how cool it feels. I think it feels better than when the english edition came out. I was too tired from the struggle then-- now I can be giddy and joyful. and I am.
"series of essays on the construction, deployment and use of search technology "