Andrea Richeson

Rosenfeld, Information Architecture: Chapter 19

• Centralization is not always the best approach. Adopting a shared metadata can be a significant roadblock.
• Guerilla EIA examples: folksonomies & wikis, creating cross-departmental content
• Take a phased approach.

Albers, M. and Kim, L. User web browsing characteristics using palm handhelds for information retrieval.

Whereas people using the Web tend to engage in open-ended, exploratory behaviors,exploratory behaviors, PDA’s are intended to support task-specific use. Thus user ability to retrieve information–including locating and relocating information, building mental models of the website, and remembering the information once the user has found it–may differ in substantive ways.

…reading behaviors supported by PDA’s need to focus more on “direct access strategies” than open-ended browsing.

Kim, L. and Albers, M. Web Design Issues When Searching for Information on a Small Screen Display.

Overall, users took more time to perform the tasks on the small screen interface, with the break in efficacy appearing between 225 and 350 word-lengths. Finally, contrary to our hypothesis, participants were similarly accurate across conditions.

The high variability of PDA search times in this study suggest the complexity of factors contributing to effective design.

Kamba, T., Elson, S. A., Harpold, T., Stamper, T., & Sukaviriya, P. N. (1996). Using small screen space more efficiently. Paper presented at the Conference on Human factors in computing systems, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

In this paper, we will propose that a variable delay in the response of overlapping widgets and text improves the effectiveness of the semitransparent widget/text model. We assumed that varying the delay by which objects in different virtual layers of the screen responded to users’ attempts to select those objects would make it possible for users to select partially obscured objects without having to resort to a toggle to switch between layers.

Buchanan, G., et. al. Improving Mobile Internet Usability. 2001

Design guidelines for WAP usability:

From our analysis of the perceived WAP problems, user views and our case-study work both with commercial and our own user interfaces, we have identified a set of development principles forWAP service providers:

1. Develop phone based WAP services that provide direct, simple access to focused valuable content. Usable and useful WAP services on phones will be ones the give the user key, summarised information with very few keystrokes or text entry. WAP developers that try to simply convert their conventional Web material to the phone platform will fail.
2. Trim the page to page navigation down to a minimum; use simple hierarchies which are similar to the phonemenus that users are already familiar with.
3. Reduce the amount of vertical scrolling by simplifying the text you wish to display (avoid wordy messages; go for action oriented keywords).
4. Reduce the number of keystrokes you expect the user to do. You can do this by simplifying navigation and by replacing text input with other types of interaction
method (e.g., list selection).

… We achieved improvements almost doubling user performance.

Nielsen, J. “Accessible Design for Users with Disabilities”. 1996

Making the Web more accessible for users with various disabilities is to a great extent a matter of using HTML the way it was intended: to encode meaning rather than appearance.