Information seeking behaviour

Model of user experience while searching information (six stages):

1. Initiation: The user becomes concious of a gap in knowledge. Feelings of uncertainty and apprehension are common; the main task is to recognize a need for information.
2. Selection: Ubncertainty often gives way to feelings of optimism and a readiness to begin searching. The task is to identify and select the topic to be investigated. Thoughts are forward-looking and attempt to predict an outcome.
3. Exploration: Feelings of uncertainty, confusion, and doubt return. The general inability to precisely express an information need commonly results in an awkward interaction with the system.
4. Formulation: Rising confidence ion decreasing uncertainty mark a turning point in the process. Forming a focus becomes the chief task as thoughts become clearer.
5. Collection: Interaction with the information system is most effective and efficient. Decisions about the scope and focus of the topic have been made and a sense of direction sets in. Confidence continues to increase.
6. Presentation: The goal now is to complete the search and fulfil the information need. A sense of relief is common as well as satisfaction and dissatisfaction (in the case of a negative outcome). Thoughts center on synthesizing and internalizing what was learned.

By Carol C. Kuhlthau, cited in Kalbach (2007, p.47)

Transitional volatility in Web Navigation

According to Danielson, people navigate in a cycle of habituation, prediction, and re-orientation:

1. Habituation: While interacting with a web site, people become accustomed to its navigation mechanisms and overall systems. But it’s not just the currently viewed page that contributes to habituation: people may have memory of all pages they’ve experienced. For each navigation act, they bring prior knowledge and expectations.
2. Prediction: From patterns of navigation within a web site and cues that provide ’scent’ to information, such as link labels and link position, people predict the attributes of destination pages. They anticipate what comes nect while navigating.
3. Re-orientation: Once a new page is reached, people familiarize themselves with it. Re-orientation occurs. The navigation on the new page now becomes incorporated into the navigator’s model of the site, and the cycle begins again.

From David R. Danielson ‘Transitional volatility in Web Navigation‘, cited in Kalbach (2007, p.34)

David Ellis: Behavioural model of information seeking

Six primary behaviour patterns in information seeking:

1. Starting: identifying relevant sources of interest
2. Chaining: following and connecting new leads in an initial source
3. Browsing: scanning content of identified sourcves for subject affinity
4. Differentiating: filtering and assessing sources fior usefulness
5. Monitoring: keeping abreasts of developments in a given subject area
6. Extracting: systematically working through a given source for material of interest

David Ellis, cited in Kalbach (2007, p.26)

Book index: Designing Web Interfaces

Bill Scott: Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions

Principle one: Make it direct

In Page Edit
• Single Field Inline Edit
• Multi Field Inline Edit
• Overlay Edit
• Table Edit
• Group Edit
• Module Configuration
• …

Drag and Drop
• …
• Drag and Drop Module
• Drag and Drop Object
• Drag and Drop Action
• Drag and Drop Collection
• The Challenges of Drag and Drop

Direct Selection
• Toggle Selection
• Collected Selection
• Object Selection
• Hybrid Selection

Principle 2: Keep It Lightweight

Contextual Tools
• …
• Fitt’s Law
• Contextual Tools
• Always Visible Tools
• Hover-Reveal Tools
• Toggle Reveal Tools
• Multi Level Tools
• Secondary Menu

Principle 3: Stay on the Page

Overlays
• Dialog Overlay
• Detail Overlay
• Input Overlay

Inlays
• Dialog Inlay
• List Inlay
• Detail Inlay
• Tabs
• Inlay Versus Overlay?

Virtual Pages
• Virtual Scrolling
• Inline Paging
• Scrolled Paging: Carousel
• Virtual Panning
• Zoomable User Interface
• Paging versus Scrolling

Process Flow
• …
• Interactive Single Page Process
• Inline Assistant Process
• Dialog Overlay Process
• Confirgurator Process
• Static Single Page Process

Principle 4: Provide an Invitation

Static Invitations
• Call to Action Invitations
• Tour Invitation

Dynamic Invitations
• Hover Invitation
• Affordance Invitation
• Drag and Drop Invitation
• Inference Invitation
• More Content Invitation
• …

Principle 5: Use Transitions

Transitional Patterns

• Brighten and Dim
• Expand/Collapse
• Self-Healing Fade
• Animation
• Spotlight

Purpose of Transitions
• Engagement
• Communication

Principle 6: React Immediately

Lookup Patterns
• Auto-Complete
• Live Suggest
• Live Search
• Refining Search

Feedback Patterns
• Live Preview
• Progressive Disclosure
• Progress Indicator
• Periodic Refresh

Agile and UCD: Agile is good for refining, not defining.

“Agile is good for refining, not defining.

(…) if you know what your requirements are and these have been properly informed with user research, comparative analysis, business objectives, and analysis of what content you have and what you can technically achieve, then Agile alone can work well.”

Anthony Colfelt: Bringing User Centered Design to the Agile Environment

5 stepping stones for building social experience

1. What’s your social object? Make sure there is a “there” there. Give users a reason to rally. Why would someone come to your site?
2. Give people a way to identify themselves and to be identified.
3. Give people something to do
4. Enable a bridge to real life (groups, mobile, meetings, face-to-face)
5. Gently Moderate. Let the community elevate people and content they value.

Erin Malone: 5 Steps to Building Social Experiences

The pain of pagination

It’s always worth re-visiting ‘best practices’ that are for the most part never being really questioned. Pagination is a good example. While discussing pagination with developers, I got the impression that it is (or it used to be) a best practice for technical reasonsmore than it is based on actual user insight. There are some obvious (technical) benefits of returning database query results in chunks: it allows quick page load, saves bandwidth, server resources, and energy. It allows designers to apply efficient page grids and to send relevant information into the footer. Oh, and it adds some page-impressions to your SEO statistics.

But what about the user? From what I see and hear in usability test session, users don’t like it and don’t really use it. Although modeled on the simple and very familiar pattern of turning book pages (well, may be not that familiar anymore?), pagination works well only for users who are willing to make an effort. Page-turning on the Web is a complex operation involving a series of cognitive and physical steps: understanding the idea of pagination, allocating the pagination bar, understanding the next step required (where am I and where do I want to go), locating and hitting a (more often than not) tiny link.

Most users seem to be satisfied with a limited number of results anyway. This is certainly true for Google-like search results or for all other ‘transient data’ (Scott 2009, p. 155), where data further down the line become less relevant for the user. But what, for example, if you want to check this season’s trendiest trainers that happen to be a list of 123 items in no particular order – and you don’t want to miss any of them? Comparing items across different pages is painful and ineffective. The product pages of the Adidas online shop employ an alternative to pagination that addresses user needs without straining server resources. Content is incrementally loaded on demand, i.e. when the user scrolls through the page. With a bit of buffer, this works very well. Incremental page load (or yahoo-style crolling) requires new thinking around page-layout and meaningful tools, but for many use cases it promises the end of clumsy page poking and the pain of pagination.

Other examples:
Globrix property search
Artists page of Bandcamp (combining incremental page load with pagination)

Database report standards

• Don’t underestimate workload for planning, designing, and developing reports. Check carefully number, complexity, and required format of reports. Consider external business intelligence tools to do the job.
• Don’t leave report development for the end of the project; utilise given report requirements to sanity-check the technical architecture of the project
• Check and discuss required format (online, CSV, PDF) for the different reports. Do not forget necessary design work for PDF reports.

Components of a report:

1. Title (distinct name of the report)
2. Report date (when report was generated)
3. Cut off date OR report period (does the report refer to figures at a given moment in time or over a period of time?)
4. Any other filter applied to the data set
5. Columns including raw and calculated data fields? Tinker with row lay out to reflect given hierarchy in data set.
6. Subtotal figures
7. Total figures
8. Concluding statements

User experience mindset (PACE)

“The user experience mindset is an acquired condition for which there is no cure.”

Jesse James Garrett talks about new challenges for User experience professionals who increasingly will need to pursue an integrated approach to UX (multi-channel experience including products, services, environment and more).

The actual challenge is to design independently from a specific medium. Or as JJG puts it:

“Experience design is the design of anything, independent of medium or across media, with human experience as an explicit outcome and human engagement as an explicit goal.”

The four domains of user experience design (the PACE model):

1. Perception: engaging the senses
2. Action: engaging the body
3. Cognition: engaging the mind
4. Emotion: engaging the heart

Jesse James Garrett’s talk on UX Week 2009 Video

User Interface Flow Models

Another common diagram to create is a user interface (UI) navigation or UI-flow diagram (…) to explore how you will architect the UI of your system by exploring the flow between major UI elements, including both screens/pages and reports. This is critical to your system’s success because the user interface is the system to your stakeholders. Not the technology. Not the data. Not really cool frameworks that you’re working with. If you do not architect the user interface effectively you run the risk that you will build a system that your stakeholders aren’t interested in working with. See example from the book ‘Maturing usability‘

Scott W Ambler