SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: tabs within tabs
Re: SIGIA-L: tabs within tabs
From: Steve.Mulder_at_corp.terralycos.com
Date: Mon Oct 15 2001 - 16:49:34 EDT
I often wonder if, as IAs, we fall in love with subtle complexities that
almost all users easily ignore. Where we may make distinctions between
categories, facets, and "lenses," I've seen in much user testing that users
tend to think of them all as simple categories or sections. If a user
spends only 1 or 2 seconds on a page looking for good links, chances are he
or she isn't spending time learning our well-thought-out classification
schemes. They're simply looking for the keywords words that they think will
take them closer to their goal.
In the case of Amazon's new tabs, the main disconnect for me is the
labeling, which could be more informative and consistent across tabs. As
someone else mentioned, "Product info" isn't accurate or informative of
what's inside.
On the other hand, kudos to Amazon for continuing to drive forward and
experiment!
Steve Mulder
Manager, Information Architecture
Terra Lycos
"christina"
<cwodtke_at_elegan To: <sigia-l_at_asis.org>
thack.com> cc:
Sent by: Subject: Re: SIGIA-L: tabs within tabs
owner-sigia-l_at_a
sis.org
10/12/01 03:44
PM
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5098059,00.html
Well, for me it came down to the tool and the use.
tabs are ways to sort your "stuff" books in one folder, movies in
another...
and so on.
But what we see in the product info area is quite different than the tabs
above-- this isn't different stuff, it's die ways to see the same thing.
For
the sake of simplicity, lets call them "lenses" By switching lenses, you
can
view the product different ways: by review, peak inside, see what else is
written in a similar vein. I agree with the complaint voiced earlier,
because it is kinda of weird.. buy it used seems different from the other
lenses, but I suppose constancy is the hobgoblin of my mind anyhow....
I sort of wish they had come up with a different GUI object for switching
lenses than the tab. same for google--- it's really not tab behavior.
Of course the users probably won't care. But what if they had come up with
something different, and what if it was a tad more intuitive?
hmmm... still pondering....
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