So, what do you do?When people ask me what I do for
a living, I usually tell them I design Web sites. Let’s
face it, most people who ask that question want an answer
they can understand, not an indoctrination. That’s
why I don’t often use the phrase “information
architect” among the uninitiated. It causes too
much trouble.It causes trouble because it’s not
always easy to explain the complexities of the work
information architects do. They often have to fall back
on vaguely defined metaphors such as “information
spaces” to describe their area of specialization.
These terms, naturally, make no sense to most people.
Information spaces bear only the roughest resemblance
to the physical spaces people encounter in the work
of those “real world” architects.At the very
least, information spaces are different from physical
spaces in one crucial regard. In the real world, everything
you put into space is going to be visible to visitors
by default. The designer of the space has to choose
to hide something. With an information space, everything
is hidden by default. The only parts of the space visitors
can see are those the designer has chosen to reveal.
Information architects are only able
to give users a limited amount of information about
the options available to them. Sure, a paragraph could
be written about each navigation choice available, but
stubborn users won’t read it. This puts the information
architect between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
Users don’t want to have to guess what’s around
every corner, but they won’t sit still long enough
for someone to tell them either.Paper or plastic?Information
architects can better understand how to communicate
navigational choices by examining how users make choices.
A typical user, faced with a typical, freshly loaded
Web page—her eyes bouncing around the page—takes
in all the options available. Maybe she scrubs the pointer
over a few navigation elements. Then, finally, she’s
poised to click. In that moment, as her pointer hovers
over the link and finger hovers over the mouse button,
she has a picture in her mind of what is on the other
end of that link. Where does that picture come from?
What informs the details of the user’s imaginary
result?
Every link makes a promise, but the
creators of the link have little control over what that
is. The promise exists entirely in the mind of the user.
Information architects can hope to influence that image
in users’ minds in a way that makes it more likely
that what they actually see as a result of clicking
the link will make them feel the promise has been fulfilled.The
navigation decision—whether or not to click—hinges
on the mental image users create of the page they expect
to see. Fortunately, a few tools are available to help
influence the images in users’ minds: language,
design, and the understanding of the expectations users
bring to sites. In order to deploy these tools effectively,
the information architect needs to understand the process
of extrapolation going on in the user’s head in
that moment before the mouse is clicked.
The most important factor in evaluating
the link is its language. First and foremost, users
will look for specific words that they would use to
describe what they’re looking for. They aren’t
mulling over interpretation and connotation. They’re
looking for particular words, and finding those particular
words will overwhelmingly cause them to click links.
If they don’t see their own words, they’ll
keep an eye out for words they would expect other people
to use. A synonym will do just fine, but it won’t
generate the level of interest that an exact match will.Even
if the link text is not an exact match or a synonym,
users will still take note if it is in the same conceptual
neighborhood as their target. Mentally flagging links
that might be related to what they are seeking can help
them in two ways. In some contexts, it can reassure
them that they’re on the right track, keeping them
looking for a closer match. In other cases, if the closer
match doesn’t turn up, that close-but-not-quite
link may turn out to be their best bet, bringing them
back to click.
When presentation speaks.A couple of
other factors in the presentation of the link will cause
users to extrapolate meaning. The visual treatment of
the link can communicate quite a bit about its content.
Bold and red shout, “Look at me! I’m important!”
while small and gray says, “I’m here if you
come looking for me.” Conversely, using similar
visual treatment for different links communicates conceptual
similarity. Maybe the visual treatment is intended to
communicate something to the user; maybe it’s just
a stylistic choice. Whatever the case, users are going
to try to get all the information out of the visual
treatment that they can.
“ Every link makes a promise,
but the creators of the link have little control over
what that is.” The link’s placement on the
page can help inform users’ navigational decisions.
Important or overarching concepts find placement near
the top. Closer to the center, users expect to find
options specific to the context of the page they’re
currently viewing. Perhaps more important than absolute
placement is the placement of the link relative to other
navigational items. It’s not uncommon to see a
navigation bar display a continuum of ideas, moving
from general to specific or from common to obscure.
Links that are visually clustered together are considered
to be conceptually related. This clustering provides
context for interpreting the link that the link lacks
considered in isolation.
All the information users have to go
on are the language of the link, its visual treatment,
and its placement on the page. Yet, despite this extreme
shortage of information, they somehow develop mental
images of the result they’ll get when clicking
a link. The mental image might not literally be a picture
of the page in their minds—although if they’re
visual thinkers, it may take exactly that form. They
may have formed a mental impression of the content and
the manner of its presentation. This impression isn’t
derived solely from the information they have gleaned
from the navigation design, though. They also take their
own experience into account.
First, users have their experience
with the rest of the Web to consider. They have grown
accustomed to seeing certain terms used in consistent
ways across Web sites—“search,” “about,”
“privacy,” “site map”—and have
picked up on some of the conventional ways navigation
items are treated visually. This experience informs
their interpretation of the navigation.
In addition, users may have some experience
with a particular site as well. Maybe they have seen
the site dozens of times, or maybe they are just a few
pages into their first visit, but, in either case, they
have a set of expectations about how this specific site
works. Those expectations extend from the vocabulary
the site uses to the style of presentation of its content
and the design elements used throughout.
All of that experience, both general
and specific, serves as a filter through which they
process the information the page provides about the
content behind each link. Out of that process, they’ll
form a mental image, an expectation about the corresponding
page. That mental image will be evaluated for the probability
that the page will meet the criteria that make the page
worth visiting.
What's the goal?It doesn’t matter
if they have a specific informational goal in mind or
if they are “just browsing”—they will
have some criteria against which they’ll be evaluating
that mental image. If they have a specific goal, the
mental image may not be required to meet the goal completely.
Simply feeling that clicking the link will get them
closer to their goal may well be enough. If they don’t
have a specific goal, their criteria may be only vaguely
defined, or difficult to articulate, but this process
of navigation by extra- polation will still apply.
It’s important to note that users
won’t bother to extrapolate images for every link
on the page before making decisions to click. On the
contrary, the very first link to catch their attention,
tipping the scales of their evaluation criteria, will
earn the click. If what they see falls short of their
expectations, they’ll probably go back to where
they started—perhaps a bit more discouraged. If
they keep finding themselves disappointed, they’ll
just leave.
Of course, that very disappointment
is what information architects are in the business of
preventing. It’s not just about categorization
schemes and organizing principles. A rich understanding
of the process of mental extrapolation users go through
every time they decide to click a link is critical.
In a very real sense, information architects have to
try to get inside users’ heads to predict what
they’ll be thinking.
Maybe I’ll adopt that as my new job description:
mind reader.
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Jesse James Garrett is one of the founders of Adaptive
Path, author of The Elements of User Experience, and
a recognized figure in the information architecture
community. He created the Visual Vocabulary, an open
notation system for IA development, and his personal
site at jjg.net is one of the Web's most popular destinations
for information architecture resources.
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