SIGIA-L Mail Archives: RE: SIGIA-L: Categorizing information by
RE: SIGIA-L: Categorizing information by user type - research or opinions on usefullness needed
From: huerro_at_consumer.org
Date: Fri Dec 07 2001 - 09:22:24 EST
Chris,
Your response to Brett (based on the brief information he supplied to the
list) is right on target, in my view. Bob Huerster, Research Librarian,
Indexer, Thesaurus Editor, huerro_at_consumer.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Chandler [mailto:chrischandler67_at_earthlink.net]
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 4:41 PM
To: sigia-l_at_asis.org
Subject: Re: SIGIA-L: Categorizing information by user type - research
or opinions on usefullness needed
Brett,
Not being able to convince someone in a meeting (developers,
designers or clients) that you are more of an expert at what
user's want than they are is a constant problem in our
profession. Your best ammunition is the testing you've done
on users -- congratulations on even doing such tests by the
way, it's far too rare. I hope that you've got some good
documentation of the user tests, (video is best!) that
allows you to actually demonstrate problems with the
"mandated" solution to the sponsor.
If the sponsor isn't respecting your (or your teams)
expertise, then it is unlikely to me that he/she will
respect the expertise of a published study -- first because
it's rare to find a decision-maker with the time or the
inclination to read the conclusions/studies you find,
secondly, because it's rare to find published research
directly on point, and finally, because in my experience,
the boss always wins these types of arguments because they
are the boss.
Furthermore, I think it is very rare, with a
site/organization of sufficient complexity, to come up with
a single-best navigation scheme. People have a wide variety
of searching/learning styles, and it's usually good practice
(your results may vary!) to support user's seeking
information with multiple paths, in some combination of
category, role or task (often as FAQs) and of course search
based navigation options.
You seem to be characterizing the relationship with the
sponsor as contentious/competitive, (although I am going on
limited information!) and I guess what I'm suggesting is
that you might have more success by reframing the situation
to give the sponsor what they want without sacrificing
support for the people using the site.
Good Luck and I hope you'll let us know how it turns out.
-cc
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