By Dave O’Brien
 
Suppose you’re designing (or redesigning) the overall structure of a website. You’ve come up with a new structure - depending on the coffee, you may have come up with two or three. But are they good? Which one is best? And are they better than the old structure? Until recently, there wasn’t a quick way to find out, short of building the site and testing it after the fact.
 
We weren’t the only ones looking into how to test the organisation of websites. Some years ago, Donna Spencer pioneered a simple technique with a complicated name: Card-Based Classification Evaluation. Donna did her testing on paper, but it struck us that an online tool would make the technique much quicker and easier.
 
So we built Treejack. Its purpose was to make this "tree testing" automated and easy, while answering several key questions:

• Can users successfully find items in the site?
• Can they find those items directly, without having to backtrack?
• Can they choose between topics quickly, without having to think too much?
• Overall, which parts of the site structure work well, and which fall down?
   

Treejack - a tree-testing tool

Tree testing is a simple technique, so we made Treejack a simple, focused tool. Its sole purpose is to improve site organisation through quick, iterative testing. In a typical tree test, about 50 participants click a web link to start a Treejack session:

• Each participant is shown a website task (e.g. "Sign up for the company newsletter.")
• They see a list of the site’s top-level topics.
• They click a topic, and see the subtopics under it.
• They continue clicking down until they find the answer. They can also back up and try a different path, or give up and move on to the next task.
• After about 10 tasks, they’re done. Elapsed time: 10-15 minutes.
   

Interpreting the results

After those 50 people have tried 10 tasks each, clicking through your site structure, Treejack can show you how well the structure performed, and more importantly, show you which parts failed with users. It summarises the results into three values:
 

• Success - The % of users who found the correct answer.
• Speed - how fast users clicked through the tree. Quick choices suggest high confidence, while hesitation suggests that topics are not clear enough.
• Directness - how directly users reached an answer. Ideally, users reach their destination without having to backtrack and try a different path.

These are measured for each task, with an overall score for the whole test.
In a way, it’s like analytics for a website you haven’t built yet.

Lessons learned

We’ve run several tree tests now for large clients, and along the way, we’ve learned a few things:
 

• Test a few different alternatives. Because tree tests are quick to do, we can take several proposed structures and test them against each other. This is a quick way of resolving opinion-based debates over which is better. In a recent government project, one proposed structure showed much lower success rates than the others, so we were able to discard it without regrets or doubts.
• Test new against old. You don’t just want your new site structure to be different, you want it to be better. Tree testing is a great way to determine this. In the same government project, the original structure only had a 31% success rate. Using the same tasks, the new structure scored 67% - a solid quantitative improvement.
• Lather, rinse, repeat. Everyone talks about being agile and iterative, but schedules and budgets often quash that ideal. Tree testing, however, has proved quick enough that we’re able to do two or three revision cycles for a given tree, using each set of results to progressively tweak and improve it.
   

Summary
Tree testing has become an important part of our information architecture work with clients. And Treejack has given us the automation we were after - a quick, simple-to-use tool that generates clear results quickly.

Like user testing, tree testing shows us (and our clients) where we need to focus our efforts, and injects some user-based data into the site-design process. Its simplicity means that we can do variations and iterations until we get what we came for - a tested, effective site structure.
 

The online banking industry has revolutionized how people manage their finances. First introduced to New Zealand in 1997 by ASB, since then it’s taken off. 56% of New Zealanders now use online banking at least weekly (the highest out of the 13 countries covered in the World Internet Project).
 
Despite its popularity, online banking may have reached the saturation point in New Zealand. It’s fundamentally the same as it was in 1997, and I believe it’s time for a shake-up. So here’s what I think New Zealand banks need to do to innovate:
 
 
1. Help people manage their finances
 
Why can’t I see a simple graph of my spending when I log in to online banking? Why doesn’t the bank make an attempt to automatically categorise my expenses, so that I can see where I might be overspending?
 
Simple functionality like this can help me manage my finances as an individual, but there is also an opportunity to raise the financial literacy of New Zealanders as a whole.
 
The banks don’t even need to show much leadership; they could just facilitate conversations between their customers. For example, online tools like Mint and Wesabe have thousands of people sharing tips on how to save money on groceries or pay off the mortgage more quickly. Why do we need to rely on third parties? Why can’t the banks do this kind of thing?
 
 
2. Ensure that functionality is easy to find
 
According to Forrester, "Financial-services executives rate usability as the most important contributor to the success of a bank or brokerage site." But as more and more banking services go online - foreign exchange, term deposits, signing up for new accounts - it’s getting harder and harder to find stuff. BNZ have given up completely and have a top-level category called ‘Other Services’.
 
I believe that this issue arises because banks are very project-driven. Individual project managers are focused on delivering their project on time and within budget. Project managers are awarded by getting products to market, not on the customer experience of what they implement. Because the funding model is so project-centred, little thought is given to how the project fits into the broader context of online banking or how it contributes to a holistic customer experience.
 
 
3. Focus on analytics
 
There are 6 people at Trade Me who focus full-time on analytics - looking at how customers are using trademe.co.nz, trying to identify content holes and process bottle necks. We consult with most of New Zealand’s banks, and I don’t know of a single person whose job it is to look at how people actually use online banking - how to make the experience better.
 
 
4. Cross-sell, up-sell
 
Over time, carefully tracking how people use online banking results in powerful insights into customer needs and behaviour, product and campaign effectiveness, and even purchasing or service trends. This information can help banks to better understand, target, and service various user segments, and identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
 
When carefully targeted, customers don’t perceive links to additional products or services as a sales pitch; they see them as useful links. For example, if I am constantly maxing out my credit card, and one day I see a link to increase my limit, I’m not going to get annoyed. I’m going to be pleased, and the bank is going to get more business from me.
 
 
5. Appoint a Customer Experience Officer
 
"Banks need to think of themselves as purveyors of customer experiences, and they need to master cross-channel distribution — the integration of clicks and bricks. The experience has to be superlative, whether it takes place inside a bank branch, at an ATM, on the phone, or on the Web." - Bob Steele
 
A customer doesn’t just interact with a bank online. You might deal with a branch to sort out your mortgage, get a text alert when your balance is running low, phone the call centre when you want to ask about something in a statement.
 
To create a superlative customer experience across all these interactions, there is no avoiding it - there needs to be one person who is responsible for the overall customer experience. Call centre, IVR, ATM, online banking, public site, branch - one person. We only know of one brave organisation in New Zealand who has done this.
 
 
 
After a long period of strong growth in the number of users of online banking services, the market is entering its next phase. The banks have no choice but to innovate, and the key success factor is going to be the customer experience.
 

By Ruth Brown and Philip Cockrell

Many local governments in NZ now deliver good websites with good content.  However, a recent survey highlights that just 15% of councils have formal strategies to build e-government services. Only 25% of councils provide interactive forms, and less than 10% enable automated fulfilment. 
 
Government websites are increasingly becoming the face of government for citizens and the popularity of services like online banking means that expectations are only going to grow.
 
So here are our tips on creating a useful, usable local government website. 

Create a coherent online strategy. Which transactions should be automated? What transactions should be offered on what channel? How are you going to measure? How are you going to shift people? A strategy will help you to figure out what services to offer on what channels, and helps to ensure that you meet both the users’ and the organisation’s goals.

Pick the right services to put online. Choose popular services that people use often and that would make sense to automate. Chose services that would provide significant cost savings, or where data integrity is particularly important. (Take a look at http://www.insidepolitics.org/ to check out the most popular e-government services across the globe).

Follow a user-centred design methodology. To create a compelling online experience you need to deeply understand your site visitors through user research. Ideally any new services you put online should be designed iteratively, with regular usability testing at the beginning and throughout the process.

Make sure people can find the services. Make sure people can find the services they are seeking. Recent research from Jakob Nielsen suggests that while task success has improved impressively since 2004 as a result of a greater focus on usability; bad information architecture is still causing most of the remaining user failures. 

Follow online forms best-practice. Ensure that online forms are as quick to fill out by asking only as many questions as you need.  Ensure that you prevent errors wherever possible, and that error messages constructively help users solve their problem. (Check out the Forms That Work website for more great tips).

Great usability has never been as important as it will be in 2009; as citizens expect more and more government services to be provided online. Follow these tips to make it easier for users to get the information they need, when they need it, and in a format that they understand.
 

By Richard Kerr and Trent Mankelow

Recently I used an airline’s touch-screen kiosk to check-in, and made the mistake of touching the No button on the ‘dangerous goods’ screen. I’d anticipated that the question would be worded something like ‘Are you carrying any dangerous goods?’, like it would be if I was physically checking in. Unfortunately it wasn’t worded that way, and pressing No kicked me out of the system. An airline representative, who had been hovering nearby, moved in and cancelled the process. He then took us through the whole process again, this time doing every step for me. How embarrassing.
 
This got me thinking. Shouldn’t a successful self-service kiosk interaction be one where I can do it myself?
 
This is an important question as more and more services are being migrated to kiosks. BNZ has departure fee kiosks, Dymocks has introduced a BookFinder kiosk, PAK’nSAVE have a SHOP’nGO kiosk as part of its self-scanning experience. Back in 2005 the Photo Kiosk was even named the Person of the Year by the PhotoImaging Manufacturers & Distributors Association.
 
 
How to create a great kiosk
 
The first step in designing any kiosk is to establish its purpose. This involves understanding who the audience is and what their goals are. Then you should work out the common tasks they’ll want to perform. (It’s interesting to note that research suggests that kiosks work best when they focus on just a single transaction.)
 
Next, you should adopt a user-centred, iterative design process.
 
This involves testing your kiosk designs with representative users performing representative tasks using the kiosk or a prototype. For example, if the kiosk is for supermarket shoppers, you might test with the actual people who do the family shopping. In fact you would ideally conduct the tests in the environment that the kiosk will be ultimately be located - in the supermarket itself.
 
 
Kiosk usability tips
 
As part of designing a kiosk, you’ll want to take into account the large body of research that exists. The following guidelines can help to produce a great kiosk experience:
 
•    Optimise for ease of learning over efficiency of use. For most kiosk interfaces it is important to presume no prior knowledge of the system by the user. The appearance of the interface should convey that it is basic or at least straight forward and simple to use.
 
•    Design for single touches rather than common web/desktop interactions. Multi-step point and click gestures that are appropriate for mouse and keyboard interactions may confuse kiosk users. Ideally eliminate interactions that involve dragging, double-clicking, scrolling or scroll bars. For example, pull-down menus that necessitate a press, drag and release can be difficult to execute using a touch-screen.

•    Don’t display the mouse cursor when the customer touches the screen. Any evidence about the operating system driving the experience can break the user’s mental model about how they are interacting with the kiosk. It may confuse users about which actions might be possible, and it looks unprofessional.

•    Don’t use black as a background colour, as it promotes reflections and accentuates finger prints. Instead, use halftones or textured backgrounds.

•    Attract customers to the kiosk. Ensure that there is a prominent ‘Touch to start’ button, and include a short looping introduction to familiarise users with the system, explain how it operates, and alert users to what they can achieve using it.

•    Ensure that there are clear visual cues that elements have been selected. For example, make buttons ‘depress’ when touched to indicate when they have been ‘pushed’. Other ways of indicating this are colour or shade changes, a ‘negative’ of the button or even sound.

•    Gives customers a sense of control. Display a busy indicator if a process will last longer than a few seconds. Offer clues about where the user is in the system, and how far they have to go to complete the process.

•    Design the system so that the user can complete the process as quickly as possible. This will increase the chance that the user will stay to complete the process and will decrease the chance of physical fatigue.

•    Carefully consider how questions are phrased when leading the user through the process. In particular, if the kiosk is replicating a task already performed in the real world discover the exact wording of how the question is asked. For example, if users are used to answering a question in the affirmative, consider making sure the related question on the kiosk is also asked in the affirmative. 

•    Track how the kiosk is being used. It can be very useful to track how often a kiosk is used and when it is used, the amount of users per day, the average time spent at the kiosk, the average completion time for tasks, and the last screen visited before leaving.
 
A great kiosk provides a better experience than the one customer can currently receive over the counter. That’s the promise of airline check-in kiosks - they shouldn’t just make the experience quicker, they should make it better.

Good self-service kiosks reduce costs for the business, but great ones also deliver a rewarding and engaging customer-experience. It’s good for the business and the customer. 

Interested in ensuring your new kiosk is as easy to use and intuitive as possible? We have done kiosk and touch-screen work for leading organisations such as Air New Zealand, Navman, Westpac and others. Let us know if you’d like to know more about our services, by emailing Trent.
 

$200,000,000 was spent on online advertising in New Zealand in 2008. But what percentage of those thousands of ads were effective? How many were ignored, or, worse still, annoyed the very consumers they were supposed to persuade?
 
In our work, we have found that following a few basic rules of thumb can produce effective ads without frustrating users.
 
Support the user’s goal. For example, if a user is reading a music review and sees a link to purchase the album online, chances are they will appreciate it.  It’s not always possible to target ads this specifically, but at least try to make the ad relevant to most of the audience.
 
Give the user control. Any ad that removes control from the user will annoy them. Don’t create ads that pop up, won’t close, are constantly animated, or trick users into clicking on them.
 
Reduce clutter. A survey of over 4,000 web users (PDF, 1.38MB) showed that over one-third will immediately abandon a site that appears cluttered.  The survey also showed that 51% of users had a less favourable opinion of the advertiser’s product when it appeared on a cluttered site.
 
Consider using textual ads. We conducted user testing that compared a news site before and after a redesign. Participants unanimously agreed that the number of ads on the redesigned site had decreased.  The new site had in fact increased both the number of ads and the amount of screen real estate dedicated to ads.  The only difference was that many more ads on the new site were text based.
 
Don’t put ads near important site links. Eye-tracking studies prove that people will avoid looking directly at some ads.  In a round of testing we recently completed, a site had important links near an advertisement.  Users assumed they were just part of the ad and didn’t notice them.
 
Don’t use pop-ups.  Most users close pop-ups within a few of seconds or ignore them completely.  We see this again and again.  Jakob Nielsen found that more than half of participants in a study of 18,808 users reported that pop-ups affected their opinion of the advertiser very negatively.
 
If you must animate, animate only once then stop.
 
Be honest. Make it clear to the user that the ad is in fact an ad, what it’s advertising, and what will happen if they click on the ad.
 
Replicate your site look and feel in the ad. Studies have shown that ads that blend with a site’s design are more likely to be looked at than ads that are in contrast.
 

Many people now accept that they will encounter advertising on sites. Following these few simple rules of thumb will ensure the maximum success for advertisers without frustrating users. 

We are running our first Breakfast Briefing event in Wellington on Wednesday on the results of reviewing over 50 research papers on online advertising. Let us know if you’d like to come, by emailing Kimberley.

 World Usability Day mobilises usability professionals in over 40 countries to raise awareness of usability through a series of public events. The theme for 2008 was transportation, with a focus on how we access and use transportation, and the role that transport systems, processes, and infrastructure play in shaping our society and culture. This year, Optimal consultants contributed to events in Auckland, Wellington and Sydney.

Auckland: First into the air

On the 13th of November Optimal Usability’s Auckland office held its first World Usability Day celebrations with a breakfast event held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

With the promise of Optimal’s famous ‘usability gift’ and a full cooked breakfast on the menu, the turnout to this year’s event was fantastic. Shailesh Manga introduced this year’s theme and, having got the ball rolling with poor usability examples from the transport industry, turned to a discussion of aspects of Air New Zealand’s self service.

Ed Sims from the Air New Zealand executive team then provided a fascinating glimpse into the heart of a large and complex organisation that not only takes notice of, but also takes action on the feedback received from both customers and employees alike. Ed reminded us to be mindful of usability factors when designing products and the interview proved to be the highlight of the event.

Next on the agenda was Sam Ng talking about Optimal Usability’s latest usability assessment tool - ChalkMark.

By taking a simple image and turning it into a clickable online task completion activity, ChalkMark can provide feedback from real users within hours, allowing time between design iterations to be significantly decreased. Best of all, design decisions can be based on an understanding the needs of the end users, ensuring they receive an optimal experience. Those working on the product can also finally feel confident of their direction during development and sure of success after completion. Thanks Sam!

All in all this year’s World Usability Day event was a resounding success and it was certainly great to have Ed Sims take part in the celebrations.

Wellington: Car nagging and card tagging

In Wellington, we had a different flavour. Trent Mankelow from Optimal Usability in Wellington and Gerry Gaffney from Information Design in Melbourne spoke with about 65 people who braved the 7am start be the first of the 170 events from around the world. (Well, first equal with Auckland).

We started out discussing the latest innovations in vehicle infotainment systems. These are systems that integrate the control of multiple devices in a single interface, and help control things such as the air-conditioning and stereo system. The latest versions of these devices (such as Ford and Microsoft’s Sync - watch the video) are voice activated, and will speak back commands to the driver. The most recent UX magazine, of which Gerry was the editor, had a number of interesting facts about the voices used in these systems. It seems that sexism and ageism are alive and well in the vehicle infotainment industry. For example: 

• BMW in Germany have just changed their voice system from a female voice to a male because male drivers got angry at being told what to do by a woman.
• Male voices typically get more attention and respect than female voices, from both males and female drivers.
• Older drivers apparently respond better to younger voices. One theory is that older drivers think of younger people as having better vision, and are more likely to see things that the driver may have missed.
• A perky voice can be irritating to a driver who is upset, but inspire better driving among happy drivers. For those who were upset, a calm, even slightly depressed-sounding voice actually improved their driving by 40%. 

We then talked about Hong Kong’s famed Octopus card, and our local equivalent, the brand new Snapper card. Passengers hold their Snapper card over a reader when they board the bus in Wellington and again as they get off. The reader on the bus uses GPS technology to deduct the appropriate fare. Audience members had a lot to say about the user experience when using the Snapper. Many found it difficult to check their balance and expensive to recharge, while others found they frequently forgot to "tag off" when leaving the bus, which meant they were charged the maximum fare.

In all, it was a fun morning with great views over the harbour capital.

Sydney: What would it take to get you out of your car?

In Sydney a day-long programme of speakers from different backgrounds tackled the transport theme. Between sessions, the attendees viewed and voted for the entries to a competition for transport-related insights and ideas.

This was the fourth time World Usability Day had been celebrated in Sydney, and included interesting speakers, plenty of volunteers and of course, good food! This year we used a seminar format, instead of the Open Day style of previous years. The organising group from the Sydney UPA chapter did a terrific job, thanks to months of careful preparation. Susan Wolfe, as past-president of the Sydney UPA chapter and one of the event organisers, did a great job of being MC for the day. The sessions were well-attended and a great rapport between the speakers and the audience developed over the course of the day.

While the first sessions looked at transport issues from a usability perspective, as the day progressed the range of speakers’ viewpoints broadened and we moved from the intimate (making personal transport choices) to the synoptic (considering human factors in bus and bicycle transport system planning). It was fascinating to see how some of the core concepts of usability and user-centred design have spread beyond IT into the design of transport networks and other systems, and how even some familiar technologies - such as eye tracking - are being applied to research into topics such as driver awareness of cyclists.

After the last session, judging of the design and photo exhibition became a contest between two entries that both analysed and redesigned the mess of unreadable and almost incomprehensible signage used in Australia to indicate kerbside parking restrictions. Both showed keen observation and insight, but the ultimate People’s Choice winner used a clock-face design to simplify different restrictions and time zones into an outstandingly simple display.

Finally, after a rich and rewarding day, the sense of professional community carried on into the evening at a nearby open-air bar. This was the best Sydney WUD ever, and with many new faces becoming involved the event promises to get better yet.

Back in 2004 we were doing a card sorting project for a banking client, and really needed to be able to slice-and-dice the data in ways that existing tools didn’t support. We didn’t find anything that could do what we wanted, so we ended up building our own Flash-based card sorting tool over a weekend.

Three hectic years later, we finally ended up releasing a public beta of our card sorting tool to the world. It had gone through a lot more testing and revisions by that stage, and several thousand participants had completed card sorts for our clients. We thought it was pretty useful but we weren’t sure if anyone else would think so.

Given that we’ve had the tool out in the wild for nearly 18 months we thought it would be fun to some analysis into who was using Optimal Sort, and what they were doing. (We first talked about this stuff at OZ-IA 2008, and you can get the presentation online).

So, our first fact is that information architects are very multinational. The 2,552 Optimal Sort customers come from 121 countries, including some unusual locations like Mozambique, Ghana, Bolivia, Serbia, the Bahamas, Georgia, Malta and the Cayman Islands. (As a general rule, Asian countries are vastly under-represented in our customers, possibly because our tool doesn’t support non-English languages.)

People using Optimal Sort tend to work for an internal team (45% of users), which is typically small in size (48% work in a team of less than 5 people).

The companies that they work for though, are massive. Our customers come from organisations that have an average (!) of 5,169 staff.

All those information architects have definitely been busy. Since we went live with the public version of Optimal Sort, 3,875 different card sort studies have been run. A staggering 117,932 people have completed a card sort.

What’s interesting is to see that 65% of the card sorts are what we called open sorts. (Open sorts are when you let participants choose their own category names, whereas in a closed card sort you force people to drop the cards into pre-defined categories.)

The reason there are more open sorts than closed sorts is that closed card sorts aren’t very useful. They are one way of validating a proposed information architecture, but there are much smarter, more robust ways of doing this. (Stay tuned for an announcement very soon of an exciting new tool to give you much more confidence that you have the structures and labels right.)

What is probably the clearest statistic of all is that information architecture as a field is growing in prominence and it’s growing fast.  According to the IA institute annual report there were 750 members in 2007. In 2008 there were 1,500 members. Its membership doubled in 12 short months. Doubled.

It’s a great time to be in the field, and we owe a depth of gratitude to all the pioneers who have used Optimal Sort and helped us to learn what it takes to make a useful card sorting tool. Thank you all!

A common lament of designers and usability consultants is "if only you’d come to us earlier". In establishing Optimal Experience this year, we saw the opportunity to work further upstream, before the client closed off options or used up resources that would have made for a better result.
 
So, we’re excited to be working with a major Australian government department as it prepares for a ground-breaking new web initiative. Last week, we held a three-hour scoping workshop with 30 stakeholders to help crystallise a shared vision - a fistful of ideas that will grow as planning, design, writing and development follow in the next few months.
 
This project is challenging. It is a national initiative calling for cooperation within and across Australia’s three layers of government as well as its commercial and community sectors. But the biggest challenge of all is a commitment to deliver ‘easy’, ‘user-friendly’, ‘central’ public access to a broad range of government programs. Those simple words tie the project’s success to the quality of the user experience - to results, not gestures or promises. That’s why we’re excited, and why the workshop was abuzz.
 
Some of those 30 stakeholders represented other programs with their own funding, plans, schedules, and their own websites. One of the big issues is to unravel all the interdependencies. That calls for lots of discussion, and we need consensus and cooperation despite the differing perceptions, assumptions and priorities. Yet at this early stage there’s nothing to use as a common reference point. A few words, but no detailed requirements and certainly no design to point to and pore over.  
 
We knew that this workshop needed to provide a mechanism for stakeholders and the project team to develop a common vision for the site and a common understanding of the issues and factors influencing decision-making.  This is essential for creating the conditions for confident, effective project planning and decision-making; in particular for the strategic technology and content issues that will govern the project schedule.
 
So to facilitate the discussion, we prepared a range of site concepts beforehand to focus the workshop discussions at a practical, concrete level as much as possible. This minimised the need for participants to digest unfamiliar, complex, abstract information at short notice; helped ‘ground’ the discussion in reality rather than through hypothetical situations; and enhanced the group’s ability to make confident decisions.  Participants left the workshop with a shared view of the end goal (and at least an inkling of the tasks that lie in front of them).  We are now revising the site concept to create a common reference for project stakeholders and a starting-point for requirements and user-centred design activities. 
 
The site concept captures only the essentials for purposeful communication as the project takes shape, without encroaching on the freedom necessary for innovation.  This concept is really just a place-holder - it’s not there to restrict the ongoing development of promising options by imposing unnecessary detail too early.
 
The value of this approach is allows us to scope the project in a much more meaningful way, focusing on the ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘who’, not just the ‘what’.  We can consider the editorial function, the breadth and depth of content, the means of access, the technical effort and the overall governance.  It allows us to look traditional software development approaches, and ensure that the relationships, guidelines and processes are in place to support the project in delivering on its promises.

This month, we welcome back Larry Marine, to respond to last month’s newsletter about link-rich home pages. He writes about when lots of links might not be the right answer, and what to do about it. Larry is a founder and principal of Intuitive Design & Research, and holds a degree in Cognitive Science. He is an expert in user research and user-experience, and has worked with companies of all sizes, from start-ups to Fortune 500.
 
 
After last month’s article, you would be forgiven for thinking that link-rich homepages are the answer to every web design problem.  Unfortunately, however, it’s not that simple. Link-rich homepages are a good solution for information-oriented domains, but a task-oriented environment may be better served by a different approach.
 
Usability testing shows that information-oriented designs are not very successful in task-oriented environments. An information-oriented website, such as a standard business or corporate site, tends to offer plenty of content, from varying types and sources. A task-oriented site intends to help customers solve problems, such as determining the right health insurance options for a couple expecting their first child.
 
Information-oriented sites organize and categorize information by the content type and relationship. This approach relies on the users’ ability to find, assimilate, and use the right information, and most importantly, to know what information to ignore. Such sites work well when users know what they are looking for and how it is organized, but this approach rarely works well when the users need more guidance.
 
In a task-oriented environment, the users barely know the extent of their problem, much less what to look for or how it is organized on the site.   They can get lost and frustrated very quickly, and chances are, they won’t come back.  A much more successful, though more difficult, design approach helps the user define their problem and then suggests the best solution.
 
As you might guess, the design approach is very different for these two domains, and just as an information-oriented approach is not very successful in a task-oriented environment, the reverse is also true. If you know what you are looking for (as in an information-oriented environment), a task-oriented approach seems quite cumbersome.
 
But what does a task-oriented problem domain look like? To begin with, content doesn’t have to be information artifacts. It can be anything.  Take buying flowers, for an example. In an on-line flower shop, an information-oriented approach would have users find different flowers by flower type or name and put them together in a bouquet. A typical florist would have little trouble performing that task with such an information-oriented tool, but the average on-line flower purchaser is not a florist. Actually the average flower consumer is on the opposite end of that scale - men.
 
The typical male doesn’t know or care much about flowers.  All they want is to get a nice bunch for their sweetheart, in as short a time as possible. If it wasn’t for the last minute, the typical man would get nothing done, especially when it comes to anniversary and birthday gifts. I’m a man, so I know! When it comes to flowers I need them fast, and I don’t want to spend half a day figuring out which flowers I need. I just want the right bouquet for the occasion. After years of marriage, I have learned one thing about flowers, with the exception of Valentine’s Day, nothing cries insincerity more than a simple, dozen red roses. Roses are supposed to be a surprise, not an easy way out.
 
OK, so now we have the root of a task-oriented problem. I need just the right flowers grouped together in a bouquet that is appropriate for the occasion. A task-oriented approach should begin by asking me for the occasion, and then show me a set of bouquets perfect for that occasion. This is a big difference between an information-oriented approach and a task-oriented approach. An information-oriented design will typically provide an information artifact, such as an article, in one and only one location. A task-oriented design may very likely duplicate artifacts, such as putting the same bouquet in many different appropriate occasions.
 
Take a look at ProFlowers.com, an on-line florist that employs a task-oriented user-experience approach. The Nielsen ratings of on-line commerce for May, 2008 show that Proflowers is number 1 in conversion rates, almost 36%. There are a number of reasons for this, not the least of which is their task-oriented design. I know, because I designed it and the CEO still publicly acknowledges that the UI design is one of their key success factors. Interestingly, the other on-line florists, at the time, used an information-oriented design that required users to build bouquets. What was the hot seller on those sties? You guessed it, a dozen red roses.
 
But as I said, task-oriented designs only work in task-oriented domains. Focusing on making sure you understand the problem domain correctly before defining a solution will help you find the right design approach.
 
Now go buy your sweetheart some flowers.

This month we’d like to welcome back Donna (Maurer) Spencer.  We last interviewed her nearly a year ago, on card sorting. Today she is talking about link-rich home pages, a subject that is near and dear to my heart.
 
I recently had a conversation with a manager of a large government website. He boasted about the recent changes to the department home page.  He was particularly proud of one of his developments. "I reduced the number of links from 67 to 17", he told me.
 
My eyebrows shot up and I just managed to stop myself gasping in surprise.  Regaining my composure, I calmly asked him, "Oh, really. How did that work out?"
 
"It’s much better," he said.  "Now people only have to choose from the 8 main categories on the home page" (the other 9 links were footer links and site utilities).
 
I walked away knowing that this manager had no real idea whether the changes worked and with a strong feeling that they probably hadn’t.
 
Believe it or not, link-rich home pages (ones where you have a lot of links) are OK.  They might even be a really good option, especially for large websites with a wide variety of content.  Let me explain why.
 
Whenever we combine content into groups and decide on a label, we are creating a category. On large websites with varied content, creating a small number of categories that represent all the content is extremely difficult.  That’s because as we create fewer and fewer categories, the labels get more and more abstract. The labels chosen may mean something to the developers, or the staff of that organisation, but will the customers understand?  How will the customers know how to find the information they want?
 
That’s where link-rich homepages can help. Instead of using just broad categories as the entry point to a site - we can use broad categories plus detailed links. Take a look at the MAF website in New Zealand for an example.
 
An example I’ve worked on recently was for a big government department in Australia. The old home page navigation had a left-hand navigation bar with 8 main categories. The new approach still uses the left-hand navigation bar, but the body of the page has the category name plus links to sub-topics and relevant external websites. The addition of key links helps explain what the each category is about, and allows people to jump directly to a topic of interest (and they do - when the new version was released, traffic to the topics pages increased).
 
A word of caution is necessary, however.  Effective link-rich home pages don’t just happen.  Too many links can be confusing and hard to navigate.  There is a lot on the page, so you need to take special care to:
 

• Cluster links into groups that make sense to the reader - or people will still not know where to start.
• Place a lot of attention on good visual design - use plenty of whitespace, good alignment and good line height. Otherwise the groups of links will not be readable.
• Avoid using other attention-grabbing devices such as banner ads and anything that moves - the visual load will be too high.

The final challenge with link-rich pages is that everyone will tell you that you are wrong - the common perception is that less is better. The best way to overcome this is to undertake usability testing. But don’t just test the link-rich page. Test an alternative version with a more traditional small set of categories. That way you’ll know that your link-rich version works, and you’ll be able to show that it is better than the alternative.
 
Want to know more? Hear Donna rave about the advantages of link-rich home pages and much more IA goodness at our workshop on the 21st of August in Wellington.